Fixed-income investments are in the spotlight, thanks to strong yields and prevailing stock market uncertainty. A solid income stream paired with relative price stability is an appealing combo, and investors are taking advantage. If you’d like to increase your allocation to fixed income, here are six solid funds to consider.
Why Invest In Fixed Income Funds?
Fixed-income assets provide important diversification for well-rounded portfolios. The best fixed-income investments can deliver predictable income without wild price swings. Alongside growth-oriented equity holdings, fixed-income securities have a stabilizing effect. Learn more about diversifying investments.
Funds provide easy access to that fixed-income exposure. They also deepen a portfolio’s diversification because they hold multiple securities—often with varying maturities and issuers.
How These Fixed Income Funds Were Chosen
The best fixed-income investments below were identified by screening mutual funds and ETFs for these criteria:
- Maturities ranging from two to seven years. Intermediate-term maturities balance risk and return, according to experts.
- Five-star Morningstar ratings. Star ratings reflect a fund’s historic risk and return performance relative to peers. Ratings, ranging from one to five stars, follow a bell curve distribution. The top rating, five stars, is assigned to the top 10% of funds in the peer group.
- $0 minimum investment. Some mutual funds have minimum investments of $2,500 or more, which can be difficult to budget. This list only includes funds, including ETFs, with no minimum investment requirement.
- Net expense ratio 0.25% or less. Expense ratios quantify the fund administrative costs you pay as an investor. Expenses dilute returns, so a lower ratio is better.
- No load. Mutual funds can charge loads, or sales fees, on purchase and sale transactions. ETFs do not have loads.
Although the universe of funds screened included mutual funds, the top funds meeting these criteria were all ETFs.
6 Of The Best Fixed Income Funds To Diversify Your Investments
The table below introduces six fixed-income ETFs with intermediate-term maturities, reasonable expense ratios and strong track records relative to peers. They are listed from lowest to highest expense ratio.
1. SPDR Portfolio Intermediate Term Corporate Bond ETF (SPIB)
- NAV: $33.02
- Net expense ratio: 0.04%
- 30-day yield: $0.05
- Average maturity: 4.88 years
SPDR Portfolio Intermediate Term Corporate Bond ETF Overview
The SPDR Portfolio Intermediate Term Corporate Bond ETF tracks the Bloomberg Intermediate US Corporate Index. The holdings are fixed-rate debts, each with an outstanding par value of $300 million or more, issued by industrial, utility and financial businesses.
Why SPIB Is A Top Choice
SPIB holds nearly 5,000 debt securities, with the top holding comprising just 0.23% of the portfolio. Issuers include Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Duke Energy and Amazon. All holdings are investment-grade quality, with an emphasis on A1 through A3 credit ratings.
A1 through A3 are the fifth, sixth and seventh highest ratings on Moody’s scale. They are considered upper-medium grade, which implies low credit risk but warrants a premium vs. the highest-rated AAA issues. This supports the fund’s competitive yield of 4.95%. SPIB has the longest average maturity of the funds on this list, at 4.88 years.
SPIB provides monthly distributions. Since early 2024, the payouts have ranged from $0.10 to $0.12 per share.
2. VanEck IG Floating Rate ETF (FLTR)
- NAV: $25.43
- Net expense ratio: 0.14%
- 30-day yield: $0.05
- Average maturity: 3.12 years
VanEck IG Floating Rate ETF Overview
VanEck IG Floating Rate ETF tracks the MVIS US Investment Grade Floating Rate Index. The index includes investment-grade, corporate-issued, floating-rate notes.
Why FLTR Is A Top Choice
FLTR provides exposure to floating-rate debt, which is appealing if you expect interest rates to rise. Because the rates reset periodically, the holdings should not lose value when interest rates increase—nor will they appreciate if rates fall.
The securities in the FLTR portfolio are denominated in U.S. dollars, but the issuers are all over the world. The international exposure to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Japan and others can extend your portfolio’s diversification. On the other hand, FLTR has a heavy concentration in financials, which could be a disadvantage depending on how else you’re invested.
FLTR pays distributions monthly. Over the past 18 months, the payouts have ranged from $0.09 to nearly $0.14.
3. iShares 3-7 Year Treasury Bond ETF (IEI)
- NAV: $117.35
- Net expense ratio: 0.15%
- 30-day yield: $0.04
- Average maturity: 4.74 years
iShares 3-7 Year Treasury Bond ETF Overview
iShares 3-7 Year Treasury Bond ETF invests in intermediate-term debts issued by the U.S. government. This portfolio is more conservative than funds holding corporate debt.
Why IEI Is A Top Choice
Moody’s recently downgraded the U.S. government’s credit rating from the highest AAA rating to AA1, citing the growing debt balance and high interest payment ratios. Standard & Poor’s and Fitch, the other two credit agencies, downgraded the U.S. government from AAA in 2011 and 2023, respectively.
Even so, IEI provides a good yield and slightly higher credit quality than many corporate debt portfolios. The effective duration of nearly five years ensures some stability in interest income, though this portfolio would be subject to price changes driven by interest rates.
IEI pays distributions monthly, in amounts that have recently ranged from $0.28 to $0.34 per share.
4. Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF (JAAA)
- NAV: $50.61
- Net expense ratio: 0.20%
- 30-day yield: $0.05
- Average maturity: 4.41 years
Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF Overview
Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF invests in investment-grade collateralized loan obligations (CLO). CLOs are securitized bank loan portfolios, which include floating-rate loans made to companies with credit ratings below investment grade. The loans have collateral, which provides some security, and the portfolio is divided into groups, called tranches, of varying risk levels. The AAA tranche is the safest. AAA investors receive payments first and absorb losses last.
Why JAAA Is A Top Choice
JAAA provides exposure to higher-yield, floating-rate CLOs. This fund is a diversification play. CLOs do not have the downside risk of traditional fixed-income securities because their rates adjust to market conditions. But due to the complexity of these assets and the lower quality of the underlying loans, their yield can be high. The presence of collateral and the priority of the AAA tranche mitigates some of the risks.
JAAA launched in 2020 and has since produced a three-year average annual NAV return of 5.9%. The fund makes monthly distributions that have recently ranged from $0.20 to $0.27, producing a 30-day yield of 5.48%.
5. Eaton Vance Short Duration Income ETF (EVSD)
- NAV: $50.86
- Net expense ratio: 0.24%
- 30-day yield: $0.05
- Average maturity: 2.48 years
Eaton Vance Short Duration Income ETF Overview
Eaton Vance Short Duration Income ETF invests in U.S. Treasury securities, corporate bonds, mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities with an average duration of three years or less.
Why EVSD Is A Top Choice
EVSD is an actively managed and diversified portfolio of fixed-income securities with short to intermediate maturities. The portfolio prioritizes securities in the lower end of the investment-grade range—ratings of A1 through A3 and Baa1 through Baa3 on Moody’s scale.
About 30% of the EVSD portfolio is asset-backed, mortgage-backed and commercial mortgage-backed securities. There is also a small position in higher-yield, speculative bonds. The inclusion of varying debt types and credit qualities helps the fund reach its stated goal of above-average returns over three to five years.
EVSD pays monthly distributions that have fluctuated from $0.18 to $0.24 per share over the past 18 months.
6. iShares CMBS ETF (CMBS)
- NAV: $47.89
- Net expense ratio: 0.25%
- 30-day yield: $0.04
- Average maturity: 4.55 years
iShares CMBS ETF Overview
iShares CMBS ETF invests in U.S.-issued, investment-grade, commercial mortgage-backed bonds. The underlying mortgages typically finance office buildings, shopping centers, factories, hotels and apartment buildings. As with CLOs, the mortgages are grouped by their risk level to create multiple tranches with different risk levels and yields.
Why CMBS Is A Top Choice
Commercial mortgage-backed securities pay higher yields than Treasury or corporate bonds and have different risk profiles. They are tied to commercial real estate, since it is the underlying collateral for the loans.
This ETF’s portfolio is primarily AAA- and AA-rated securities, at the lower end of the risk spectrum. It provides a nice entry point for investors who want to raise their overall fixed-income yield by diversifying into commercial mortgage-backed securities.
CMBS pays monthly distributions that have varied from $0.11 to $0.14 over the past 18 months.
Bottom Line
Fixed-income funds can deliver income, stability and diversification with varying degrees of risk. They can also provide exposure to more complex market segments that were once only available to institutional investors, such as CLOs and commercial mortgage-backed bonds.
If you are new to fixed-income investing, opt for simpler funds that prioritize credit quality. You can always expand your exposure for higher yields later, as you gain investing confidence.
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