GOVI vs GOVT

GOVIBInvesco Equal Weight 0-30 Year Treasury ETF

GOVTAiShares U.S. Treasury Bond ETF

In short

GOVI Most Treasury funds hold whatever the government issues most. GOVI builds a ladder instead: about 30 Treasuries, one maturing each February out to 30 years, each held in equal size.

GOVT The plain-vanilla Treasury sleeve. One index fund spanning the full maturity spectrum of US government debt, running since 2012 at five basis points, with none of the credit risk that lives in the rest of the bond aisle.

Stated mandate

GOVI The fund tracks an index of up to 30 U.S. Treasury notes or bonds arranged in an annual February maturity ladder spanning the yield curve.

GOVT The fund seeks to track an index of U.S. Treasury bonds spanning the full maturity spectrum, providing broad exposure to U.S. government debt for stability and income.

Why people hold it

• GOVI Equal weighting means the ladder sets the curve exposure, not Treasury issuance patterns. Short, intermediate and long rungs each get the same slice.invesco.com
• The February maturity schedule is the whole design: a rung comes due each year and the ladder is rebuilt to span 0-30 years again rather than aging shorter.invesco.com
• Straight U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, no corporate or mortgage credit mixed in, and it pays monthly. Launched in 2007, so it has run through several rate regimes.
• It follows its ICE laddered Treasury index closely, which is what you want from a rules-based bond portfolio.

• GOVT Charges 0.05% a year, well under the median fee in its broad-Treasury peer group.
• Tracks the ICE US Treasury Core Bond Index tightly, one of the cleaner index implementations among broad Treasury funds.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades heavily, which tends to show up as thin bid-ask spreads for retail-size orders.
• US Treasury debt and nothing else, paid out monthly. No corporate credit to underwrite, no mortgage prepayments to model.ishares.com

Worth knowing

• GOVI At 0.15% it is the priciest of its broad Treasury peers. SPTB charges 0.03% and GOVT 0.05% for cap-weighted exposure to the same government paper.
• Equal weight puts as much in a 30-year bond as in a 1-year note, so the portfolio carries more interest-rate sensitivity than a market-weighted Treasury fund.
• About 30 bonds on a fixed calendar is a deliberate slice of the curve, not the whole Treasury market. Trades moderately, so limit orders are the sensible habit.

• GOVT Covering the full maturity spectrum means long-dated bonds are in the mix, so the share price moves with interest rates more than a short-dated Treasury fund's would.
• Nominal Treasuries only. Inflation-linked exposure sits in different funds, such as SPIP or VTP.
• SPTB runs the same broad-Treasury idea at 0.03%, two basis points less.

Full GOVI profile⁠

Full GOVT profile⁠