HYLB vs HYUP

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

HYUPBXtrackers High Beta High Yield Bond ETF

In short

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.

HYUP Most high-yield ETFs hand you the whole junk market. HYUP goes hunting in the loud end of it: a passive index built around the higher-beta slice of USD high yield, priced at half the fee of the typical peer.

Stated mandate

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.

HYUP The Fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the performance of the Solactive USD High Yield Corporates Total Market High Beta Index through a passive indexing approach.

Why people hold it

• 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).

• HYUP Not a blend, a dial. The Solactive index it follows screens for the high-beta end of USD high yield, so you hold the punchier slice of the credit market in one passive wrapper.
• Costs 0.20% a year against a 0.40% median for high-yield bond ETFs, and it has tracked its index closely since launching in 2018.
• Spread across roughly 700 bonds and pays monthly, so the risk sits with the segment rather than a handful of borrowers.
• One of the stronger builds in a crowded high-yield field: low fee, plain vanilla 1940 Act index fund, no derivative machinery under the hood.

Worth knowing

• 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.

• HYUP High beta cuts both ways. Leaning into the bonds that move most means sharper swings than broad high yield when credit spreads widen.
• A small, thinly traded fund. Spreads deserve a look before you trade, unlike the giants of the category.
• Broad-market high yield comes cheaper. SCYB, SPHY and Xtrackers' own HYLB all undercut this fee for whole-market exposure without the beta tilt.

Full HYLB profile⁠

Full HYUP profile⁠