SHM vs SUB

SHMAState Street SPDR Nuveen ICE Short Term Municipal Bond ETF

SUBAiShares Short-Term National Muni Bond ETF

In short

SHM A 2007-vintage muni fund that deliberately stays short: roughly a thousand AMT-free municipal bonds, none of them maturing past five years. Federally tax-exempt income, paid monthly, with far less rate whiplash than the full muni market.

SUB Munis, but only the near end of the curve. Since 2008 SUB has tracked an AMT-free index of investment-grade municipal bonds maturing inside five years, paying tax-exempt income monthly with far less rate sensitivity than long-dated muni funds.

Stated mandate

SHM The fund seeks to generally match, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the ICE 1-5 Year AMT-Free Broad Municipal Index.

SUB The fund seeks to track an index of short-term, investment-grade U.S. municipal bonds maturing from one month through five years, providing tax-exempt income while managing interest-rate risk.

Why people hold it

• SHM Runs 0.20% a year, below the 0.30% median for muni bond ETFs in its peer group.
• Spreads across roughly a thousand individual municipal bonds, so no single issuer's problems dominate the portfolio.
• Trading since 2007, one of the elder statesmen of muni ETFs, now a multi-billion-dollar fund that distributes monthly.
• Sits in the upper tier of a crowded muni ETF field on our review, helped by steady day-to-day trading and a deep bond bench.

• SUB Charges 0.07% a year against a category median near 0.30%. On tax-exempt bond income, that fee gap is a meaningful slice of what actually reaches you.
• Two dials set on purpose: maturities from one month to five years, and an AMT-free index, so neither rate swings nor the alternative minimum tax hit the same way.ishares.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund running since 2008 under iShares, with tight tracking of its ICE benchmark. One of the sturdier implementations in the muni group.
• Pays monthly, so the tax-exempt income arrives on a regular cadence rather than in quarterly lumps.

Worth knowing

• SHM Cheap for a muni fund, but not the cheapest shelf: broad muni index trackers like VTEB and SCMB charge 0.03%.
• The index stops at five years, so long-maturity muni exposure has to come from somewhere else in the portfolio.ssga.com
• Short bonds cut both ways: smaller price moves when rates climb, and smaller ones when rates drop.

• SUB The five-year ceiling is the whole design, and it cuts both ways: less rate sensitivity, but a shorter stretch of the curve to draw income from than full-maturity muni funds.
• This is a national portfolio. Single-state funds like NYF chase a home-state tax break that a nationwide muni basket cannot offer.
• Broad-maturity peers VTEB and SCMB run at 0.03%. The short-end tilt here costs a few basis points more.

Full SHM profile⁠

Full SUB profile⁠