TLT vs VGLT

TLTBiShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF

VGLTAVanguard Long-Term Treasury ETF

In short

TLT The long bond's most famous ticker. iShares launched TLT in 2002, and it became the default way to take a view on 20-year-plus Treasuries: index-tracked, heavily traded, with a deep listed options market.

VGLT Three basis points for the long end of the Treasury curve. VGLT tracks a market-weighted index of long-dated government bonds, pays income monthly, and charges a fraction of what this category typically costs.

Stated mandate

TLT The fund seeks to track an index of U.S. Treasury bonds with remaining maturities greater than twenty years, providing targeted exposure to long-duration government debt.

VGLT The fund seeks to track a market-weighted Treasury index with a long-term dollar-weighted average maturity. It uses index sampling and invests at least 80% of assets in securities included in the target index.

Why people hold it

• TLT Pure long-duration Treasuries: it tracks the ICE U.S. Treasury 20+ Year Bond Index, government debt maturing in 20 years or more, no corporate credit, no short-end dilution.ishares.com
• One of the most actively traded bond ETFs, with a deep listed options market around it, so positions and hedges can be built and unwound on-screen.marketchameleon.com
• Running since 2002 and now a multi-billion-dollar fund, paying distributions monthly.

• VGLT 0.03% a year, a fifth of TLT's 0.15% and the lowest fee among its long-Treasury peers.vanguard.com
• Sticks to the mandate: index sampling of the Bloomberg U.S. Long Treasury Bond Index, with at least 80% of assets in index securities and one of the tightest implementations in its group.vanguard.com
• Pure US Treasury paper, roughly 70 bonds, no corporate credit risk in the mix, with distributions paid monthly.vanguard.com
• A multi-billion-dollar fund that trades actively, which generally keeps bid-ask spreads modest for a long-bond vehicle.

Worth knowing

• TLT You pay for that liquidity: 0.15% a year, while BBLB tracks the very same index for 0.04% and VGLT charges 0.03% for long Treasuries.
• Long duration cuts both ways. Bonds this far out the curve move sharply when long-term yields shift, so the ride is far more volatile than a short-term Treasury fund.ishares.com
• Concentrated by design: roughly 50 Treasury bonds clustered at the long end, and the monthly payout floats with the coupons of whatever the index holds.

• VGLT Duration is the point and the risk. Long maturities mean prices swing hard when long-term yields move, in both directions.
• Not a 20-year-and-out pure play. The benchmark is the broad long Treasury index, so duration runs shorter than TLT or BBLB and shorter still than sibling EDV.
• Fixed coupons from a government issuer: no credit spread to earn, and inflation erodes the real value of that income.

Full TLT profile⁠

Full VGLT profile⁠