USSH vs VGSH

USSHBWisdomTree 1-3 Year Laddered Treasury Fund

VGSHAVanguard Short-Term Treasury ETF

In short

USSH Short Treasuries, built as a ladder. USSH tracks Bloomberg's laddered 1-3 year Treasury index, holding roughly two dozen positions spread across the maturity range, and pays out monthly.

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

USSH The fund seeks to track, before fees and expenses, the price and yield performance of the Bloomberg US Treasury 1-3 Year Laddered Index.

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

Why people hold it

• USSH The ladder is the whole idea: maturities are spread across the one-to-three-year range by index rule, not clustered wherever the Treasury happened to issue most.wisdomtree.com
• Narrow, literal mandate: US Treasury debt maturing in one to three years, and the fund has tracked that index very closely since launch.
• Pays monthly, holds roughly two dozen Treasuries, and runs as a plain 1940 Act fund. No derivatives sleeve, no leverage, no options overlay.

• 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

• USSH At 0.15% it matches the category median, but the largest short-Treasury trackers (VGSH, SCHO, SPTS) charge 0.03% for similar exposure.
• Small and thinly traded beside the category's giants, so bid-ask spreads can run wider. Limit orders are the standard workaround.
• Launched in 2024, so the live record is short and spans a single rate backdrop.

• 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 USSH profile⁠

Full VGSH profile⁠