TLT & BIL Score Billion Dollar Days This Week

Both fixed income ETFs scooped up $1 Billion Each On Tuesday.

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sumit
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Senior ETF Analyst
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Reviewed by: etf.com Staff
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Edited by: Ron Day

Investors put nearly $1 billion into two separate fixed income ETFs in a single session earlier this week, as demand for treasury investments showed no sign of abating. 

The iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) and the SPDR Bloomberg 1-3 Month T-Bill ETF (BIL) had inflows of $1.2 billion and $981 million, respectively, on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg data. 

For TLT, it was the second-largest daily inflow of the year, behind $1.8 billion pulled in July 20. Likewise, for BIL, it was the second-largest inflow behind a $1.5 billion pick up Oct 5. 

The inflows bolstered the year-to-date hauls for the pair of ETFs, both of which have been hugely popular in 2023. Since the start of the year, TLT has pulled in $20.2 billion, while BIL has gathered $8.7 billion. 

But aside from being extremely popular Treasury ETFs, TLT and BIL couldn’t be more different; the securities they hold lie on opposite ends of the maturity spectrum. 

TLT and BIL's Less-than-Stellar Performances

TLT holds bonds maturing in 20-to-30 years, while BIL holds bills maturing in 1-to-3 months. TLT is highly sensitive to interest rate movements, while BIL is largely unaffected by them. 

So far this year, BIL has returned nearly 4%, while TLT has lost almost 14%. 

Of course, this isn’t an either-or situation. Many investors own both T-bill ETFs like BIL and long bond ETFs like TLT. They serve different purposes and the fact that both are seeing strong demand in a year in which interest rates have surged to more than 5% may not come as a surprise.  

TLT, with $37.8 billion in assets, tracks a market-weighted index of debt issued by the US Treasury with remaining maturities of 20 years or more.

BIL, with assets under management of $34.5 billion, tracks a market-weighted index of all publicly issued zero-coupon US Treasury bills with a maturity of at least 1 month, but less than 3 months.

Sumit Roy is the senior ETF analyst for etf.com, where he has worked for 13 years. He creates a variety of content for the platform, including news articles, analysis pieces, videos and podcasts.

Before joining etf.com, Sumit was the managing editor and commodities analyst for Hard Assets Investor. In those roles, he was responsible for most of the operations of HAI, a website dedicated to education about commodities investing.

Though he still closely follows the commodities beat, Sumit covers a much broader assortment of topics for etf.com, with a particular focus on stock and bond exchange-traded funds.

He is the host of etf.com’s Talk ETFs, a popular video series that features weekly interviews with thought leaders in the ETF industry. Sumit is also co-host of Exchange Traded Fridays, etf.com’s weekly podcast series.

He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he enjoys climbing the city’s steep hills, playing chess and snowboarding in Lake Tahoe.

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