IBD vs SPBO

IBDDInspire Corporate Bond ETF

SPBOAState Street SPDR Portfolio Corporate Bond ETF

In short

IBD The first bond ETF ever built on biblical-values screens. IBD holds intermediate-term investment grade US corporate debt from companies that clear Inspire's rules-based Impact Score, and pays monthly.

SPBO The whole investment-grade corporate bond market in one ticker for three basis points. Most rivals sell you a maturity slice; SPBO owns the lot, and it undercuts other funds tracking the very same Bloomberg index.

Stated mandate

IBD The fund seeks to track the Inspire Corporate Bond Impact Index before fees and expenses. It generally invests at least 80% of assets in the index's component securities.

SPBO The fund seeks investment results that generally correspond, before fees and expenses, to the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg U.S. Corporate Bond Index.

Why people hold it

• IBD The original of its kind: launched in 2017 as the first faith-based bond ETF, so it has years of live operating history behind the screen, not a back-test.yahoo.com
• The screen is rules-based, not a vibe. Inspire's Impact Score rates companies from -100 to +100 and docks points for exclusionary violations, so inclusion logic is published.website-files.com
• Plain-vanilla plumbing under the values layer: investment grade corporate bonds, intermediate maturities, at least 80% in index components, with income paid monthly.website-files.com
• Rare scale for a conviction fund: assets in the hundreds of millions and moderate day-to-day trading, where most values-screened bond funds stay tiny.

• SPBO 0.03% a year against a category median of 0.19%. In bond land, where the yield does the heavy lifting, that fee gap is not a rounding error.
• Thousands of corporate bonds across the full maturity range, so you hold the broad IG corporate market instead of one duration bucket.ssga.com
• Same index, very different tolls: KORP charges 0.29%, JLQD 0.35%, JHCB 0.53%. SPBO sits at the cheap end of that list.
• Running since 2011, pays monthly, and tracks its benchmark about as closely as anything in the investment-grade corporate group.

Worth knowing

• IBD Conviction costs. At 0.41% a year, IBD runs above the typical investment grade corporate bond ETF, and well above index staples like VCIT (0.03%) and USIG (0.04%).
• Screening out whole industries shrinks the bond universe, so sector and issuer mix can look different from a broad corporate bond benchmark.website-files.com
• Among dozens of investment grade corporate bond ETFs, it sits in the lower tier of the group, mostly on fees and trading friction rather than what it owns.

• SPBO Full maturity range means long-dated paper is in the mix, so the price moves more when rates move than short-maturity peers like IGSB or SPIB.
• Corporate credit only. No Treasuries or mortgages to lean on, so the fund rides the health of corporate borrowers as well as the rate cycle.ssga.com
• Investment grade by design, US issuers only. No high-yield or emerging-market bonds in the basket.

Full IBD profile⁠

Full SPBO profile⁠