SCHO vs SLDR

SCHOASchwab Short-Term U.S. Treasury ETF

SLDRBGlobal X Short-Term Treasury Ladder ETF

In short

SCHO Short Treasuries, stripped to the studs: roughly 100 US government bonds maturing in one to three years, wrapped in a 0.03% fee. Running since 2010, and one of the tighter builds in its corner of the bond market.

SLDR A bond ladder in one ticker. SLDR spreads equal-weighted rungs across Treasury notes maturing in one to three years, so paper keeps rolling off and getting replaced without you running a spreadsheet of maturity dates.

Stated mandate

SCHO The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the total return of an index representing the short-term U.S. Treasury bond market.

SLDR The fund seeks investment results generally corresponding to the price and yield performance of the FTSE US Treasury 1-3 Years Laddered Bond Index, before fees and expenses.

Why people hold it

• SCHO 0.03% a year, a fifth of the 0.15% on the category's best-known fund, SHY. When every fund in the aisle owns the same Treasuries, the fee is the main lever.
• Pure government paper: the Bloomberg US Treasury 1-3 Year Index, tracked very closely. No corporate bonds, no credit spread dressed up as yield.schwabassetmanagement.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively and pays income monthly, so entering and exiting rarely means wrestling the spread.
• Live since 2010 and among the strongest implementations in the short-Treasury peer group, which matters in a slice of the market where execution is the whole game.

• SLDR Equal-weighted rungs of staggered Treasury maturities, built to blunt the effect of rate swings. Most 1-3 year rivals simply weight by how much debt Washington happens to have outstanding.globalxetfs.com
• 0.12% a year sits under the category median and under SHY's 0.15%, so the laddering doesn't come with a boutique price tag.
• Roughly 90 Treasury notes and nothing else: no corporate credit, no mortgage paper. Distributions land monthly.globalxetfs.com

Worth knowing

• SCHO Bonds, not cash. One to three year maturities still reprice when rates move, so the share price wobbles instead of sitting flat.schwabassetmanagement.com
• Income floats with short-term Treasury yields rather than locking in, so the monthly payout moves up and down as rates do.
• The 0.03% fee is a three-way tie with VGSH and SPTS, and VGSH tracks the identical index, so cost alone will not separate them.

• SLDR The three-basis-point club (VGSH, SCHO, SPTS) covers the same 1-3 year Treasury ground at a quarter of the fee. The ladder construction is what the extra buys.
• A 2024 launch that trades thinly next to the category's giants, which can widen the gap between bid and ask at the moment you trade.
• A ladder softens rate moves, it doesn't cancel them. Short Treasuries still reprice when yields shift.globalxetfs.com

Full SCHO profile⁠

Full SLDR profile⁠