HYUP vs SPHY

HYUPBXtrackers High Beta High Yield Bond ETF

SPHYAState Street SPDR Portfolio High Yield Bond ETF

In short

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.

SPHY State Street's junk-bond workhorse: roughly 1,900 US high yield bonds in one wrapper for 0.05% a year, a fraction of what the typical high yield ETF charges, with income paid monthly.

Stated mandate

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.

SPHY The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the ICE BofA US High Yield Index.

Why people hold it

• 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.

• SPHY 0.05% a year against a peer-group median about eight times higher. In high yield, the fee comes straight out of coupon income, so the gap does real work.
• Holds about 1,900 bonds tracking the ICE BofA US High Yield Index, broad enough that no single issuer's trouble dominates the portfolio.ssga.com
• Live since 2012, a multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively and has stuck tightly to its stated index rather than drifting from the mandate.
• Distributions arrive monthly, in step with how the underlying coupons come in.

Worth knowing

• 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.

• SPHY This is below-investment-grade credit. Defaults and spread moves drive the price far more than Treasury yields do, and sell-offs in this asset class can be sharp.
• Fees here are already near the floor: SCYB lists 0.03% and HYLB matches at 0.05%, so the cost edge over the strongest peers is narrow.
• Scope is US high yield corporates, full stop. No investment-grade ballast, no emerging market debt, nothing to soften a credit drawdown from inside the fund.ssga.com

Full HYUP profile⁠

Full SPHY profile⁠