SLDR vs VGSH

SLDRBGlobal X Short-Term Treasury Ladder ETF

VGSHAVanguard 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.

VGSH Plain one-to-three-year Treasuries for three basis points, running since 2009. No credit story, no active twist: VGSH owns the short end of the government curve and charges about as little as this category allows.

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.

VGSH The fund seeks to track a market-weighted Treasury index with a short-term dollar-weighted average maturity.

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

• VGSH 0.03% a year, against a 0.15% median for 1-3 year Treasury funds. Same fee floor as SCHO and SPTS, and a fifth of what SHY charges for the same slice of the curve.
• Sticks tightly to the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury 1-3 Year Index, one of the closest-tracking implementations in its peer group.
• Roughly 90 US Treasury issues, sampled to match the index. No corporates, no mortgages, no derivatives overlay: the only credit question is the US Treasury itself.
• Pays monthly, and the income resets as short notes mature and newer ones roll in, so it moves with prevailing short-term rates. A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively.

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

• VGSH Short maturities soften rate moves, they don't erase them. Prices still fall when yields rise, and the fund itself has no maturity date the way a single note does.
• At the short end the cost race is a tie, not a win: SCHO tracks the same index for the same 0.03%. Differences show up in trading and plumbing, not the fee line.
• Nothing here reaches for yield: no corporate credit, no inflation linkage, no long bonds. That narrowness is the design, and it behaves nothing like a core bond fund.

Full SLDR profile⁠

Full VGSH profile⁠