Daily ETF Watch: New BulletShares Added

Investors now have more BulletShares to fine-tune corporate bond allocations.

Guggenheim Investments this week launched four new additions to its family of BulletShares bond ETFs, building out its target-date bond fund lineup that allows investors to treat entire diversified corporate bond portfolios as if they were individual expiring bonds.

Wednesday’s launch included two investment-grade funds that have expense ratios of 0.24 percent, or $24 for each $10,000 invested. The new funds are:

• Guggenheim BulletShares 2023 Corporate Bond ETF (BSCN)
• Guggenheim BulletShares 2024 Corporate Bond ETF (BSCO)

It also included two high-yield funds, with expense ratios of 0.42 percent. The new funds are:

• Guggenheim BulletShares 2021 High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (BSJL)
• Guggenheim BulletShares 2022 High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (BSJM)

The Guggenheim BulletShares family of ETFs as of Sept. 16 had roughly $6 billion in assets under management divided among 16 funds. The four new funds bring the total number of funds to 20, with 11 covering the investment-grade bond space and nine covering the high-yield bond space.

Each fund in the BulletShares family targets bonds maturing in a specific year. Currently the investment-grade funds cover each year from 2014 to 2024 and the high-yield funds cover each year from 2014 to 2022.

With their staggered maturity dates, the funds can be used in laddering strategies among other investment approaches.

iShares also has its own family of 16 target-year-maturity bond ETFs. The 16 bond funds cover the AMT-free municipal bond space (2015-2020), investment-grade corporate debt (maturing in March and December of 2016 and 2018) and investment-grade corporate ex-financials (maturing in 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2023). It recently put another investment-grade corporate bond ETF into registration.

iShares Plans iBond Corp Bond ETF

Separately, BlackRock’s iShares unit has filed for an addition to its “iBonds” family of target-maturity-bond ETFs. The iShares iBonds Dec 2020 Corporate ETF will cover investment-grade corporate bonds maturing in 2020 and track the Barclays December 2020 Maturity Corporate Index. Component bonds are denominated in U.S. dollars and issued by corporations domiciled in developed countries.

The filing did not include a ticker or expense ratio, but presumably the fund will cost the same as the other corporate iBonds ETFs, which carry expense ratios of 0.10 percent.

Citigroup Debuts ‘Reinvestor’ ETN

Citigroup on Wednesday rolled out a new ETN that focuses on dividends.

The C-Tracks Exchange Traded Notes Miller/Howard Strategic Dividend Reinvestor (DIVC) tracks a fundamentally screened equal-weighted index of 30 stocks. The index’s selection criteria takes into account dividend yield and expected dividend-yield growth, as well as market valuation relative to book value, return on invested capital relative to price-to-earnings and trailing 26-week price momentum, Citi’s website said.

The website also noted that the cash dividends of the components of the benchmark are reinvested in the index. This is a feature unique to this particular product, as most ETFs and ETNs pay out dividends.

DIVC comes with an expense ratio of 0.70 percent.