LEND vs USHY

LENDDSEI High Yield Bond & Alternative Credit ETF

USHYAiShares Broad USD High Yield Corporate 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.

USHY The wide-angle lens on junk bonds: about 1,900 US dollar high yield corporate issues for 0.08% a year, a fifth of what the typical fund in its category charges. Broad, cheap, heavily traded, and it pays 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.

USHY The fund seeks to track an index of U.S. dollar-denominated high yield corporate bonds.

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.

• USHY Charges 0.08% a year while the median high yield fund in its cohort runs 0.40%. Cheap rent on an expensive-to-run corner of the bond market.
• Holds about 1,900 bonds against the ICE BofA US High Yield Constrained Index: the broad market, not a curated slice of the most liquid names.ishares.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund and one of the more actively traded in high yield, which tends to keep bid-ask spreads thin even on busy days.
• Pays monthly and has tracked its index tightly since its 2017 launch, one of the closer index matches in its peer group.

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.

• USHY High yield means below-investment-grade borrowers. When credit gets stressed this asset class drops with stocks instead of cushioning them.
• Cheaper tickets sit on the same shelf: SCYB at 0.03% and SPHY at 0.05%.
• This is a fund, not a bond ladder. No maturity date hands your principal back; the basket rolls on indefinitely.

Full LEND profile⁠

Full USHY profile⁠