HYLB vs PSH

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

PSHCPGIM Short Duration High Yield 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.

PSH Junk bonds with the interest-rate dial turned down. PSH is PGIM's active run at short-maturity high yield, measured against a 1-3 year high yield benchmark, and it pays monthly.

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.

PSH The Fund seeks total return through current income and capital appreciation. It primarily invests in diversified below-investment-grade fixed-income instruments and normally commits at least 80% of investable assets to those instruments or economically similar investments.

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).

• PSH Short end by design: the yardstick is the Bloomberg 1-3 Year High Yield Corporate 1% Capped Index, so rate swings push it around less than a full-maturity junk bond fund.pgim.com
• Actively run rather than index-cloned, with at least 80% of investable assets in below-investment-grade debt or economically similar instruments.pgim.com
• Income lands monthly, and the stated mandate is total return (current income plus capital appreciation), not yield alone.

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.

• PSH 0.45% a year sits above the high yield category median and well above index rivals like SCYB (0.03%) and SPHY (0.05%). That's the toll for an active desk.
• Short maturities trim rate sensitivity, not credit risk. The borrowers here are rated below investment grade, and defaults come with that territory.
• Trades thinly beside the category's giants and runs a modest asset base, so spreads can be wider than at the household-name high yield funds.

Full HYLB profile⁠

Full PSH profile⁠