HYDW vs HYLB

HYDWAXtrackers Low Beta High Yield Bond ETF

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

In short

HYDW High yield with the volatility dial turned down. HYDW tracks a Solactive index that screens the junk bond market for lower-beta issues, and charges half the fee its category typically asks.

HYLB Broad-market junk bonds at index-fund pricing: 0.05% a year, a fraction of what the typical high-yield bond ETF charges, spread across roughly 1,300 issues. Running since 2016, it pays monthly.

Stated mandate

HYDW The fund passively seeks to track the performance of a Solactive index covering U.S.-dollar high-yield corporate bonds with potentially lower beta than the broader high-yield corporate bond market.

HYLB The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Index. It uses a passive representative-sampling indexing approach.

Why people hold it

• HYDW Costs 0.20% a year against a category median of 0.40%, so the low-beta tilt does not come with a boutique price tag.
• The mandate is specific: passively track the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Low Beta Index, built for lower beta than the broad high-yield market.
• Roughly 600 bonds and monthly distributions, so no single issuer carries the portfolio and income arrives on a regular cadence.
• Running since 2018 with a passive index rulebook, it sits in the upper half of a crowded high-yield field on our review.

• HYLB 0.05% expense ratio puts it at the low end of the high-yield ETF field, matching SPHY and undercutting USHY's 0.08%. Fee drag matters most where yield is the whole point.
• Total-market mandate, not a filtered slice: roughly 1,300 bonds sampled from the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market Index.
• Tracking has been tight against its stated index, and it trades actively enough to keep spreads workable. One of the cleaner implementations in the high-yield group.
• Monthly distributions, with a live record going back to a 2016 launch (through the 2020 credit shock and the 2022 rate spike).

Worth knowing

• HYDW Thinly traded next to high-yield heavyweights like USHY and SPHY, which can mean wider spreads at the moment you transact.
• Lower beta is not low risk. This is still below-investment-grade corporate credit, and the screen tilts the exposure rather than removing it.
• Plain broad high-yield trackers in the same cohort, including sibling HYLB, run cheaper. The low-beta screen is what the extra fee buys.

• HYLB This is the credit-risk end of the bond market. Below-investment-grade issuers default more often, and prices can fall hard when spreads widen.
• Representative sampling means it holds a subset of the index, not every bond, so results can drift slightly from the benchmark.
• Cheap, but not the floor: SCYB runs 0.03%. HYLB is also a mid-sized fund next to the largest names in the category.

Full HYDW profile⁠

Full HYLB profile⁠