HYS vs SCYB

HYSBPIMCO 0-5 Year High Yield Corporate Bond Index Exchange-Traded Fund

SCYBASchwab High Yield Bond ETF

In short

HYS Most junk-bond ETFs buy the whole market. HYS buys only the front end: US high-yield corporate bonds maturing inside five years, which dials down interest-rate sensitivity while keeping the credit exposure. PIMCO has run it since 2011.

SCYB Three basis points for the broad US high-yield corporate market. Schwab undercuts a category where the typical fund charges more than ten times as much, spreading the bet across roughly 1,800 bonds and paying monthly.

Stated mandate

HYS The Fund seeks total return that closely tracks the ICE BofA 0-5 Year US High Yield Constrained Index before fees and expenses, using an indexing and representative-sampling approach.

SCYB The fund follows a rules-based strategy intended to track the high-yield bond market, primarily through bonds in the Bloomberg Barclays US Corporate High Yield Total Return Index and similar derivatives.

Why people hold it

• HYS Owns only bonds maturing within five years, so it carries structurally less interest-rate sensitivity than full-maturity high-yield funds.pimco.com
• Sticks close to the label: an index sleeve of roughly 900 short-maturity high-yield bonds, built by representative sampling rather than manager hunches.
• Pays monthly, and it is a billion-dollar-plus fund that has been trading since 2011, with liquidity that holds up well against its high-yield peer group.

• SCYB 0.03% a year against a category median of 0.40%. Even the cheap rivals sit above it: SPHY at 0.05%, USHY at 0.08%.
• Tracks the same Bloomberg US Corporate High Yield index as BKHY, which charges 0.22%. Same map, cheaper toll.
• Roughly 1,800 bonds, so no single issuer's blowup drives the outcome. Rules-based and passive, and it has hugged its index closely.
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively and pays monthly, which matters in a corner of the market where getting out cheaply is half the job.

Worth knowing

• HYS At 0.56%, it costs well above the cheapest broad high-yield trackers (SCYB at 0.03%, SPHY at 0.05%). That gap is the price of the short-maturity design.
• Short maturities trim rate risk, not credit risk. These are below-investment-grade borrowers, and defaults reach short bonds too.pimco.com
• By design it skips the long end of the junk market, so it can move quite differently from full-maturity high-yield indexes.

• SCYB High yield means below-investment-grade credit. These bonds behave more like stocks than Treasuries when the economy sours, and the extra income is the payment for that risk.
• Launched in 2023, so it has a shorter record than rivals that have traded through more credit cycles.
• The strategy can hold derivatives alongside the bonds themselves to track the index, one layer beyond plain bond ownership.

Full HYS profile⁠

Full SCYB profile⁠