SLDR vs SPTS

SLDRBGlobal X Short-Term Treasury Ladder ETF

SPTSAState Street SPDR Portfolio Short Term Treasury ETF

In short

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.

SPTS U.S. Treasury notes maturing in one to three years, wrapped at three basis points. SPTS sits in the cheapest tier of the short-Treasury aisle, charging a fifth of the category median for the same plain-vanilla job.

Stated mandate

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.

SPTS The fund seeks to track the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Index before fees and expenses, providing exposure to U.S. Treasury securities with remaining maturities between 1 and 3 years.

Why people hold it

• 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

• SPTS Charges 0.03% a year against a 0.15% median for short-Treasury funds. On cash-like money, the fee line is the part that doesn't drift.
• Follows the Bloomberg 1-3 Year U.S. Treasury Index closely, one of the tightest index fits among its short-Treasury peers.ssga.com
• Roughly 100 U.S. Treasury notes and nothing else. No corporates, no mortgages, no credit surprises hiding in the basket. Distributions land monthly.
• Trading since 2011 and now a multi-billion-dollar, actively traded fund, so it isn't a thin newcomer you have to nurse in and out of.

Worth knowing

• 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

• SPTS Short maturities dampen price swings, they don't erase them. When short-term rates move, the fund's price and its payouts move too.
• Government paper only, so there's no credit spread in the income. The yield is whatever the front end of the Treasury curve is paying.
• VGSH and SCHO match the 0.03% fee on the same slice of the curve. Cost alone won't separate them; execution and platform access will.

Full SLDR profile⁠

Full SPTS profile⁠