FTCB vs SPAB

FTCBCFirst Trust Core Investment Grade ETF

SPABAState Street SPDR Portfolio Aggregate Bond ETF

In short

FTCB First Trust's take on the core bond sleeve: roughly 300 investment-grade bonds, no index to hug, income paid monthly. You pay up for a manager making the calls instead of a benchmark doing it for free.

SPAB A 2007-vintage core bond fund priced at 0.03%: roughly 8,500 US investment-grade bonds in one ticket, at the same rock-bottom fee the household names charge for the same index.

Stated mandate

FTCB The fund seeks long-term total return and normally invests its entire investment portfolio in investment-grade securities.

SPAB The fund seeks to track the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index before fees and expenses, providing broad exposure to U.S.-dollar-denominated investment-grade bonds.

Why people hold it

• FTCB Does what the label says. The mandate keeps the entire portfolio in investment-grade securities, and the fund has stayed tightly inside that brief.ftportfolios.com
• Pays monthly, spread across roughly 300 bonds, so income lands on a steady rhythm rather than in quarterly lumps.
• Launched in 2023 and already a multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, so size and liquidity are not the weak links here.

• SPAB 0.03% a year against a 0.36% median for its peer group, and the same ticket price as AGG, SCHZ and BBAG on the identical index.
• Roughly 8,500 dollar-denominated investment-grade bonds in one line item, tracking the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index. Diversification you could not assemble bond by bond.ssga.com
• Trades actively and has tracked its index closely, putting it among the stronger implementations in the core-bond group.
• Running since 2007, now a multi-billion-dollar fund, and it pays monthly rather than quarterly.

Worth knowing

• FTCB Fee is the headline trade-off: 0.56% a year, above the typical core-bond fund, while index staples like BND, SPAB and SCHZ charge 0.03%.
• No declared index to measure the manager against. The shape of the portfolio is the team's call, within the investment-grade mandate.
• It sits in the intermediate-term bond lane. Investment grade trims credit risk; it does nothing about the pull of interest rates.

• SPAB Bond prices move opposite yields. When rates rise the index falls and the fund follows it down; a 0.03% fee cannot cushion that.
• AGG, SCHZ and BBAG hold the same declared index at the same 0.03%. Picking among them comes down to spreads and platform, not the portfolio.
• Investment grade and US dollar only by mandate: high yield and foreign-currency debt sit outside the remit.ssga.com

Full FTCB profile⁠

Full SPAB profile⁠