LEND vs SPHY

LENDDSEI High Yield Bond & Alternative Credit ETF

SPHYAState Street SPDR Portfolio High Yield Bond ETF

In short

LEND A 1995 high yield mutual fund that changed clothes. SEI reorganized its three-decade-old SIMT High Yield Bond Fund into its first fixed income ETF, pairing outside bond managers with an in-house CLO sleeve.

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

LEND The Fund seeks total return and normally invests at least 80% of its net assets, plus investment borrowings, in high-yield fixed-income and, to a lesser extent, alternative-credit securities.

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

• LEND Two engines, not one: outside sub-advisers run the high yield bond book while SEI manages the CLO allocation in-house. Most of this cohort simply tracks an index.seic.com
• Not a startup strategy. It ran as the SIMT High Yield Bond Fund from 1995, and the ETF reorganization kept the same objective, strategy and management approach.seic.com
• Wide net, multi-billion-dollar asset base: roughly 1,400 positions across below-investment-grade credit, with cash paid out quarterly.

• 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

• LEND Active hands cost more: 0.65% a year versus a 0.40% median for high yield bond funds, and index peers like SCYB and SPHY charge a small fraction of that.
• The alternative credit sleeve means CLOs: loan pools sliced into tranches that carry different levels of risk. Different plumbing from a plain high yield bond index.seic.com
• No declared index to measure it against, so outcomes hinge on manager and sleeve selection. Its life as an exchange-traded fund is also still short.

• 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 LEND profile⁠

Full SPHY profile⁠