FSYD vs HYLB

FSYDCFidelity Sustainable High Yield ETF

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

In short

FSYD Junk bonds with a screen. FSYD reaches for high income in below-investment-grade debt, but only from issuers with proven or improving sustainability practices, with a quality-and-value quant model doing the picking.

HYLB Broad-market junk bonds at index-fund pricing: 0.05% a year, a fraction of what the typical high-yield bond ETF charges, spread across roughly 1,300 issues. Running since 2016, it pays monthly.

Stated mandate

FSYD The fund seeks a high level of income and may also pursue capital appreciation. It primarily invests in below-investment-grade debt securities issued by companies with proven or improving sustainability practices.

HYLB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Index. It uses a passive representative-sampling indexing approach.

Why people hold it

• FSYD Rare combo: a high-yield bond fund built around a sustainability test rather than plain credit beta. What the label promises and what the portfolio holds line up closely.
• The screen sits in the prospectus, not the brochure: below-investment-grade issuers with proven or improving sustainability practices, sorted by a quality-and-value quant model.
• Spreads credit risk across roughly 400 bond positions and pays income monthly.
• Measured against the ICE BofA US High Yield Constrained Index, the same yardstick used by plain-vanilla giants like USHY, so the effect of the screen is easy to compare.

• HYLB 0.05% expense ratio puts it at the low end of the high-yield ETF field, matching SPHY and undercutting USHY's 0.08%. Fee drag matters most where yield is the whole point.
• Total-market mandate, not a filtered slice: roughly 1,300 bonds sampled from the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Index.
• Tracking has been tight against its stated index, and it trades actively enough to keep spreads workable. One of the cleaner implementations in the high-yield group.
• Monthly distributions, with a live record going back to a 2016 launch (through the 2020 credit shock and the 2022 rate spike).

Worth knowing

• FSYD At 0.55% a year it sits above the high-yield median of 0.40%, and index rivals like SCYB (0.03%) and SPHY (0.05%) cost a fraction. The screening work is the bill.
• Thinly traded and small next to the category's heavyweights, so limit orders and patience matter on the way in and out.
• Below-investment-grade debt carries credit risk: prices move with default worries in ways investment-grade bonds generally do not.

• HYLB This is the credit-risk end of the bond market. Below-investment-grade issuers default more often, and prices can fall hard when spreads widen.
• Representative sampling means it holds a subset of the index, not every bond, so results can drift slightly from the benchmark.
• Cheap, but not the floor: SCYB runs 0.03%. HYLB is also a mid-sized fund next to the largest names in the category.

Full FSYD profile⁠

Full HYLB profile⁠