Best Performing Fixed Income ETFs Of The Year

In a terrible year for the asset class, not every fixed income ETF is down.

sumit
|
Reviewed by: Sumit Roy
,
Edited by: Sumit Roy

It’s been a tough year to be a fixed income investor. The $82 billion iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (AGG) is down by nearly 10% in 2022, putting it on track for its worst year ever. Like AGG, most fixed income ETFs are down significantly. 

Excluding leveraged products, there are about a dozen fixed income ETFs that are up on a year-to-date basis. Most of these funds use shorts, put options or similar strategies, which enables them to go up when bond prices go down (and rates rise). 

For example, the Simplify Interest Rate Hedge ETF (PFIX) is designed “to be functionally similar to owning a position in long-dated put options on 20-year US Treasury bonds.” It’s up 57.5% this year. 

The FolioBeyond Rising Rates ETF (RISR) holds U.S. Treasurys and interest-only mortgage-backed securities. The MBS IOs portion of the portfolio has benefited from rising rates, propelling the fund to a 31.3% gain in 2022. 

Some of the more conventional bond ETFs have also managed to eke out gains this year. The WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund (USFR) is up 0.42% year –to date. The floating rate notes that USFR holds have little interest rate risk, as their coupon payments are reset periodically to match prevailing market rates.  

Similarly, ultra-short maturity bond ETFs, like the Clearshares Ultra-Short Maturity ETF (OPER), have little interest rate risk because they get paid back so quickly. OPER is up 0.15% this year. 

For a full list of this year’s top-performing fixed income ETFs, see the table below: 

 

Best-Performing Fixed Income ETFs Of The Year (ex. leveraged ETFs)

Ticker Fund YTD Return
PFIX Simplify Interest Rate Hedge ETF 57.45%
KMLM KFA Mount Lucas Index Strategy ETF 35.13%
RISR FolioBeyond Rising Rates ETF 31.31%
FAIL Cambria Global Tail Risk ETF 12.21%
RRH Advocate Rising Rate Hedge ETF 11.46%
RINF ProShares Inflation Expectations ETF 7.70%
USFR WisdomTree Floating Rate Treasury Fund 0.42%
TFLO iShares Treasury Floating Rate Bond ETF 0.36%
OPER Clearshares Ultra-Short Maturity ETF 0.15%
SGOV iShares 0-3 Month Treasury Bond ETF 0.07%
BIL SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF 0.01%
PVI Invesco VRDO Tax-Free ETF 0.00%
CLTL Invesco Treasury Collateral ETF 0.02%
GBIL Goldman Sachs Access Treasury 0-1 Year ETF 0.07%
IBCE iShares iBonds Mar 2023 Term Corporate ex-Financials ETF 0.08%
IBHB iShares iBonds 2022 Term High Yield and Income ETF 0.08%
IBDN iShares iBonds Dec 2022 Term Corporate ETF 0.08%
BILS SPDR Bloomberg 3-12 Month T-Bill ETF 0.09%
SHV iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF 0.14%

Note: Data measures total returns for the year-to-date period through May 13, 2022. 

 

Follow Sumit on Twitter @sumitroy2       

Sumit Roy is the senior ETF analyst for etf.com, where he's worked for 12 years. Before joining the company, Roy was the managing editor and commodities analyst for Hard Assets Investor. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he enjoys climbing the city’s steep hills, playing pickleball and snowboarding.