FTMH vs HYMB

FTMHBFranklin Municipal High Yield ETF

HYMBAState Street SPDR Nuveen ICE High Yield Municipal Bond ETF

In short

FTMH Most muni ETFs are cheap index trackers. FTMH works the other side of the street: an active hunt for tax-exempt income in the muni market's lower-rated corners, off a strategy whose track record starts in 1985.

HYMB Most muni index funds stop at investment grade. HYMB keeps going: its benchmark reaches from A-rated paper down through unrated deals, spreading roughly 1,900 tax-exempt bonds across that credit line. Income lands monthly.

Stated mandate

FTMH The fund seeks high current income exempt from federal income tax.

HYMB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the ICE US Select High Yield Crossover Municipal Index, which covers lower-rated and unrated tax-exempt municipal debt issued in the United States.

Why people hold it

• FTMH One job, stated plainly in its own filings: high current income exempt from federal income tax. That is a different mandate than a broad investment-grade muni index fund.
• The strategy's record runs back to 1985, through multiple muni credit cycles, long before the ETF wrapper showed up.
• Roughly 500 bond positions, so one troubled issuer is a dent rather than a crater.
• In a crowded muni field, it lands in the upper half of the funds we review, which is respectable company for a credit-picking strategy.

• HYMB The crossover mandate is the whole point: the index covers lower-rated (A3/A+ or lower) and unrated tax-exempt debt, not another top-grade general-obligation ladder.ssga.com
• About 1,900 bonds dilute any single issuer's trouble, and State Street has run the fund since 2011, through more than one muni credit scare.
• One of the more actively traded funds in the muni ETF aisle, which counts in a market where the underlying bonds themselves can sit still for weeks. Pays monthly.

Worth knowing

• FTMH 0.35% a year, above the muni-fund median of 0.30% and well above index staples like VTEB (0.03%) and MUB (0.05%). Active credit research is the thing you are paying for.
• High yield muni means lower-rated issuers. Credit risk and price swings run hotter here than in investment-grade muni index funds.
• Volume is moderate rather than firehose-level, and the underlying bonds trade thinly, so bid-ask spreads can be wider than the big index munis.

• HYMB 0.35% a year is the toll for assembling illiquid paper. Broad, plain-vanilla muni index funds such as VTEB and SCMB charge 0.03%.
• Lower-rated and unrated munis carry default and downgrade risk that top-rated general-obligation bonds don't, and prices can move sharply when muni buyers step back.
• The benchmark has been swapped before (Bloomberg to ICE in 2025), so older track records reflect a different index than the one the fund follows now.ssga.com

Full FTMH profile⁠

Full HYMB profile⁠