HYLB vs QHY

HYLBAXtrackers USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF

QHYAWisdomTree U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Fund

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.

QHY Most high-yield ETFs buy the market and move on. QHY runs a rules-based index that screens U.S. junk-bond issuers on profitability and tilts toward value, holding roughly 500 bonds instead of a plain cap-weighted sweep.

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.

QHY The Fund seeks to track the performance of the WisdomTree U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Index before fees and expenses.

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).

• QHY The screen is the whole point: issuers get judged on profitability and priced-in value before they land in the portfolio, an unusual filter in a corner of the market that mostly weights by debt outstanding.
• 0.38% a year, which lands just under the median fee in the high-yield ETF crowd. Rare for a fund doing extra screening work rather than tracking the broad market.
• Roughly 500 bonds and monthly distributions, so single-issuer blowups get diluted and the income shows up on the cadence bond investors are used to.
• Live since 2016 with a track record of following its stated index closely, and it grades out in the upper half of a crowded high-yield field.

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.

• QHY It's a small, thinly traded fund next to category heavyweights like SPHY and USHY, so bid/ask spreads and order size matter more here than with the giants.
• Plain cap-weighted rivals are far cheaper (SCYB at 0.03%, SPHY at 0.05%), so the fundamental screen is what you're paying the difference for.
• Screening doesn't remove credit risk. These are below-investment-grade U.S. corporate bonds, and they tend to move with credit spreads, not with Treasuries.

Full HYLB profile⁠

Full QHY profile⁠