GOVI vs SPTB

GOVIBInvesco Equal Weight 0-30 Year Treasury ETF

SPTBAState Street SPDR Portfolio Treasury 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.

SPTB State Street's Treasury slice of the Agg in one ticker: the whole curve from a year out to the long end, roughly 300 bonds, for three basis points. It arrived in 2024 as the Treasury building block in the SPDR Portfolio suite.

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.

SPTB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Index and provides exposure to U.S. Treasuries with at least one year remaining to maturity.

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.

• SPTB Three basis points. The typical fund in the Treasury cohort charges about five times that, and SPTB undercuts iShares' GOVT at five while tying Vanguard's VTG.
• One ticker covers the full Treasury curve, everything with at least a year to maturity, instead of stacking separate short, intermediate and long sleeves.ssga.com
• Plain index replication of the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Index: government paper only, no credit sleeve, no derivatives overlay in the mandate.ssga.com
• Pays income monthly, and the implementation ranks in the top quartile of its Treasury peer group on our review.

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.

• SPTB Full-curve means long bonds are in the mix, so the price swings with interest rates far more than a short-term Treasury fund does.
• It launched in 2024, so the live record is short next to cohort veterans that have traded through multiple rate cycles.
• Moderately traded rather than the volume leader in its category, so bigger orders are worth routing with limits and a glance at the spread.

Full GOVI profile⁠

Full SPTB profile⁠