JP Morgan ETFs Set New Pricing Bar

The equity and fixed-income funds are the lowest-priced funds in their categories.

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Reviewed by: Heather Bell
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Edited by: Heather Bell

Today J.P. Morgan has rolled out two cap-weighted ETFs that have the lowest expense ratios in their respective classes. Both funds list on Cboe Global Markets, parent company of ETF.com.

Equity

The JPMorgan BetaBuilders U.S. Equity ETF (BBUS), a plain-vanilla cap-weighted index fund covering the U.S. market, comes with an expense ratio of just 0.02%, undercutting the handful of funds that charge 0.03%—previously the lowest expense ratio available in the U.S.—for similar exposure.

BBUS joins J.P. Morgan’s BetaBuilders family of ETFs, the first of which rolled out last year and shook things up in the country ETF space. The JPMorgan BetaBuilders Japan ETF (BBJP) charges just 0.19% for plain-vanilla exposure to Japan’s stock market, far less than the 0.47% charged by the iShares MSCI Japan ETF (EWJ).

Fixed Income

J.P. Morgan has also launched the first bond ETF in the BetaBuilders family, the JPMorgan BetaBuilders 1–5 Year U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (BBSA), which tracks the Bloomberg Barclays Short-Term U.S. Aggregate Bond Index.

BBSA has an expense ratio of 0.05%, which puts it solidly among the very cheapest bond ETFs, and makes it the cheapest short-term bond ETF available, undercutting the Vanguard Short-Term Corporate Bond ETF (VCSH) and the Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (BSV), which both charge 0.07%.

The launch of BBUS at a fee of 0.02%, in particular, has taken the ETF fee wars to a new level, setting a new bar for similar funds.

Heather Bell can be reached at [email protected]

Heather Bell is a former managing editor of etf.com. She has also held editorial positions at Dow Jones Indexes and Lehman Brothers. Bell is a graduate of Dartmouth college and resides in the Denver area with her two dogs.