PFIG vs SPBO

PFIGBInvesco Fundamental Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

SPBOAState Street SPDR Portfolio Corporate Bond ETF

In short

PFIG Most corporate bond funds hand the biggest weight to whoever borrowed the most. PFIG's index sizes issuers by sales, cash flow, dividends and book assets instead, sticking to US public companies in the 1-10 year maturity band.

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

PFIG The Fund seeks to track the investment results of its specified underlying index before fees and expenses, investing primarily in securities from that index.

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

• PFIG Weight comes from four accounting measures of company size (book assets, gross sales, gross dividends, cash flow), not from how much debt an issuer has outstanding.sec.gov
• The 1-10 year maturity band keeps it in short-to-intermediate territory, so price swings from rate moves are milder than long-dated corporate bond funds.researchaffiliates.com
• Spreads risk across roughly 800 investment grade bonds and pays income monthly.
• Running since 2011, and it sits in the upper half of the investment grade corporate bond funds we grade.

• 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

• PFIG 0.22% a year, above the category median and well above the plain index giants (VCIT, USIG, SPIB) at 0.03%-0.04%. The fundamental screen is what the extra buys.
• Thinly traded and modest in size, so spreads can run wider than the category heavyweights. Limit orders matter more here.
• Issuers must be US-domiciled public companies, and the fund samples the index rather than buying every bond in it.sec.govinvesco.com

• 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 PFIG profile⁠

Full SPBO profile⁠