SPHY vs ZTOP

SPHYAState Street SPDR Portfolio High Yield Bond ETF

ZTOPBF/m High Yield 100 ETF

In short

SPHY State Street's junk-bond workhorse: roughly 1,900 US high yield bonds in one wrapper for 0.05% a year, a fraction of what the typical high yield ETF charges, with income paid monthly.

ZTOP Most junk-bond funds sample the whole market. This one holds only the 100 largest, most liquid US high-yield issuers, weights them equally, and reshuffles monthly. A quality screen, not a market cross-section.

Stated mandate

SPHY The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the ICE BofA US High Yield Index.

ZTOP The Fund seeks before-fee-and-expense results that generally correspond to the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg U.S. High Yield Top 100 Quality Select Equal Weighted Index.

Why people hold it

• SPHY 0.05% a year against a peer-group median about eight times higher. In high yield, the fee comes straight out of coupon income, so the gap does real work.
• Holds about 1,900 bonds tracking the ICE BofA US High Yield Index, broad enough that no single issuer's trouble dominates the portfolio.ssga.com
• Live since 2012, a multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively and has stuck tightly to its stated index rather than drifting from the mandate.
• Distributions arrive monthly, in step with how the underlying coupons come in.

• ZTOP Equal weighting means no single borrower dominates, and the index is reconstituted and rebalanced monthly to stay on the biggest, most liquid issuers.businesswire.comfminvest.com
• The index rules screen out pay-in-kind and zero-coupon bonds, the corners of junk where cash actually stops showing up.bbhub.io
• The 0.39% fee sits right at the high-yield category median, and the fund pays monthly.
• The portfolio matches its stated mandate closely, and it lands in the upper half of a crowded high-yield field.

Worth knowing

• SPHY This is below-investment-grade credit. Defaults and spread moves drive the price far more than Treasury yields do, and sell-offs in this asset class can be sharp.
• Fees here are already near the floor: SCYB lists 0.03% and HYLB matches at 0.05%, so the cost edge over the strongest peers is narrow.
• Scope is US high yield corporates, full stop. No investment-grade ballast, no emerging market debt, nothing to soften a credit drawdown from inside the fund.ssga.com

• ZTOP Plain-vanilla rivals cost a fraction of this: SCYB, SPHY and USHY all price under a tenth of a percent. The screen is what you are paying up for.
• Launched in 2025, so it has not yet traded through a full credit cycle, and its history is short next to the category's veterans.
• Concentrating on the largest issuers tilts the portfolio up in credit quality and away from the deep-discount, lower-rated end of junk.fminvest.cometftrends.com

Full SPHY profile⁠

Full ZTOP profile⁠