FTSL vs SRLN

FTSLCFirst Trust Senior Loan Fund

SRLNCState Street Blackstone Senior Loan ETF

In short

FTSL Most funds in the high-yield aisle own fixed-coupon junk bonds. FTSL owns first-lien senior bank loans whose coupons float with short-term rates, chosen by a live credit team instead of an index rulebook, with income paid monthly.

SRLN Most bond funds buy fixed coupons. This one buys senior loans, actively picked with Blackstone's credit team on the nameplate, about 700 of them, with income paid monthly.

Stated mandate

FTSL The fund seeks high current income and secondarily aims to preserve capital. It normally invests at least 80% of net assets in first-lien senior floating-rate bank loans, primarily to North American businesses.

SRLN The fund is actively managed and seeks current income consistent with preserving capital. It normally invests at least 80% of net assets in Senior Loans.

Why people hold it

• FTSL First-lien senior floating-rate bank loans: the coupons reset with short-term rates, and the debt sits at the top of the borrower's capital structure.ftportfolios.com
• Actively managed, so a credit team picks the loans rather than following a bank-loan index, spread across roughly 220 positions.
• Trading since 2013 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund that pays monthly, with a track record spanning both rate hikes and cuts.
• The stated mission is plain: high current income first, capital preservation second. A different job than chasing total return.

• SRLN Actively managed rather than index-tracking: the managers choose the loans, keeping at least 80% of net assets in senior loans.
• At 0.70%, the fee sits just under the median for bank-loan ETFs, which is unusual for a credit fund run by human pickers.
• One of the larger and more actively traded funds in a bank-loan aisle that holds only a handful of ETFs, and among the stronger implementations in that group.
• Income arrives monthly, spread across roughly 700 loans instead of a concentrated handful.

Worth knowing

• FTSL At 0.70% a year it sits above the group's roughly 0.40% median and multiples of index rivals like SCYB and SPHY, putting it near the back of its high-yield peer group on cost.
• Floating coupons cut both ways: monthly income follows short-term rates up, and follows them back down.
• These are leveraged corporate loans, so borrower defaults, not interest-rate swings, do most of the damage to capital here.ftportfolios.com

• SRLN This is leveraged-loan credit, benchmarked to the Morningstar LSTA U.S. Leveraged Loan Index. Borrowers sit below investment grade, so credit risk does the heavy lifting.
• Senior loan coupons float, so the income stream moves with short-term rates instead of locking in a fixed payout.
• Cheaper options share the shelf: FLBL charges 0.45% against 0.70% here.

Full FTSL profile⁠

Full SRLN profile⁠