JTNY vs VTEB

JTNYDJPMorgan New York Tax Free Bond ETF

VTEBAVanguard Tax-Exempt Bond ETF

In short

JTNY A 1997-vintage New York muni strategy that stepped into an ETF wrapper intact: income exempt from federal, New York State and New York City income taxes, picked bond by bond by a credit team instead of copied from an index.

VTEB Vanguard's national muni index fund, running since 2015 at three basis points, a tenth of what the typical muni ETF charges. Its benchmark screens for investment-grade bonds whose income is exempt from federal tax and the AMT.

Stated mandate

JTNY The fund seeks federal tax-exempt income and capital preservation for New York residents through investments in municipal securities.

VTEB VTEB seeks to track an index measuring the investment-grade segment of the U.S. municipal bond market. It uses passive sampling to approximate the index and generally invests in federally tax-exempt municipal securities.

Why people hold it

• JTNY Triple duty for New Yorkers. Interest is excluded from federal gross income and exempt from New York State and New York City personal income taxes.jpmorgan.comjpmorgan.com 2
• Not a startup. The strategy dates to 1997 and arrived as a converted mutual fund, portfolio and managers in place, skipping the usual seeding phase.etftrends.com
• Actively run: a dedicated credit team weighs each New York issuer against similar-rated bonds, spread over a couple hundred holdings.jpmorgan.com

• VTEB Three basis points a year against a 0.30% muni-ETF median. On tax-exempt bonds, where coupons are modest, that fee gap is a real slice of the payout.
• The index holds only investment-grade munis whose interest is exempt from federal income tax and the alternative minimum tax, so the income carries no AMT surprise.vanguard.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the most heavily traded in the muni category, which tends to show up as tight bid-ask spreads. Income is paid monthly.
• It has tracked its benchmark closely and sits among the strongest implementations in a crowded muni bond peer group.

Worth knowing

• JTNY Active costs more: 0.43%, gross and net, with no fee waiver. That sits above the category median and above national muni index funds like VTEB (0.03%) and MUB (0.05%).
• One state's credit risk. New York issuers only, so a state budget squeeze or local tax-base stress lands harder here than in a 50-state muni fund.jpmorgan.com
• Thinly traded, so bid-ask spreads can run wider than on the big national muni ETFs.

• VTEB Federal exemption, not blanket coverage. Income can still be taxable in your home state, which is why single-state funds like NYF exist alongside it.vanguard.com
• Credit quality is investment grade, so rates are the main swing factor: when muni yields rise, bond prices and the fund's share price fall.vanguard.com
• Sampling, not full replication. The fund owns a representative slice of a very large index rather than every bond in it.vanguard.com

Full JTNY profile⁠

Full VTEB profile⁠