Treasury Yields Hit a 19-Year High—These 2 Bond ETFs Offer Monthly Income
Key Points
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Rising bond yields could boost future distributions from bond ETFs, making the Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (BSV) and Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF (VCIT) appealing to income investors.
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Despite the Treasury’s expanded buyback operations aimed at curbing borrowing costs, longer-dated Treasury yields have climbed, with the 10-year Treasury recently trading around 5%.
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BSV offers a 4.1% trailing-12-month yield with lower volatility, while VCIT provides a higher 5.02% yield but carries greater risk due to its corporate bond exposure.
While the recent surge in bond rates could spell trouble for some corners of the equities market, there is a silver lining for income investors looking to bolster their dividend portfolios.
As bond yields rise, income distributions from bond exchange-traded funds (ETFs) gradually adjust to reflect those increases. But the likelihood of higher future payouts makes two ETFs—that already provide investors with strong yields—increasingly appealing: the Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (NYSEARCA: BSV) and Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF (NASDAQ: VCIT).
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Bond Yields Keep Climbing Despite Treasury’s Expanded Buybacks
Despite the U.S. Treasury’s attempt to expand buybacks in an effort to provide liquidity support and help rein in surging bond yields, the plan has backfired. Longer-dated Treasury yields have rebounded, suggesting that the plan itself is incapable of containing borrowing costs.
In an Aug. 19 press release, the Treasury said that it was “increasing, by at least double, the size of liquidity support buyback operations for longer-dated nominal coupon securities (the 10-year to 20-year sector and the 20-year to 30-year sector).”
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That measure took the previous maximum of $2 billion per operation and increased it to $4 billion. But one month later, in an updated schedule published Sept. 9, Treasury set its Sept. 10 buyback of 10- to 20-year securities at up to $6 billion and scheduled a Sept. 24 buyback of 20- to 30-year securities at $4 billion or more.
That move was widely viewed by analysts as an attempt to combat rising yields driven by inflation and record U.S. national debt, the latter of which surpassed $40 trillion in late August, having officially doubled from its 2017 level.
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As a result, the 10-year Treasury recently hit its highest level since 2007 and is currently trading around 5%. For context, that remains well below the 10-year’s all-time high of 15.84% in 1981. But the speed at which it has increased since its all-time low of 0.55% in July 2020 has been jarring.
Combined with the Federal Reserve’s first interest rate hike since 2023, pressure has been renewed on rate-sensitive stocks. But there’s a silver lining for bond funds. Yields can increase as lower-rate bonds mature and are replaced by newer bonds offering higher rates.
That’s particularly good news for the following the BSV and VCIT—which have paid shareholders trailing-12 month (TTM) yields of approximately 4% and 5%, respectively.—which could see increases to their monthly distributions amid the current rising-rate environment.
BSV: Vanguard’s Short-Term Bond ETF Captures Higher Yields More Quickly
Unlike funds that hold longer-dated bonds, shorter-duration bond funds can reinvest maturing principal more quickly.
As a result, their portfolio income can adjust faster as market yields change and their distributions can rise alongside interest rates.
That dynamic can particularly benefit a fund like the Vanguard Short-Term Bond ETF (BSV).
The BSV aims to track the performance of a market-weighted bond index with a short-term, dollar-weighted average maturity.
It employs a passive management or indexing strategy—alongside a net expense ratio of just 0.03%—designed to track the performance of the Bloomberg U.S. 1–5 Year Government/Credit Float Adjusted Index.
That index includes all medium and larger issues of the United States federal government, as well as investment-grade corporate bonds and investment-grade international dollar-denominated bonds that have maturities between one and five years and are publicly issued. At least 80% of the BSV’s total net assets—around $46.6 billion—are invested in bonds held in the Index.
The ETF has managed to trade within an extremely well-defined range for the past two years. In doing so, it has lost around 3% over the past year and less than 1% since July 2024. But what the BSV lacks in appreciation, it makes up for in distributions. Its TTM yield stands at 4.1%, or $3.13 per share annually, paid in monthly installments.
VCIT: Vanguard’s Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF Offers Higher Yields
Corporate bond funds tend to provide a close correlation with the performance of U.S. Treasury rates.
But because they are significantly exposed to companies’ financial health, they pay higher yields compared to their nearly risk-free Treasury counterparts in order to compensate shareholders for the default risks they assume.
That is exactly what the Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF (VCIT) offers investors.
The fund seeks to track the performance of the Bloomberg U.S. 5–10 Year Corporate Bond Index.
That index measures the investment return of U.S. dollar denominated, investment-grade, fixed-rate, taxable securities issued by companies operating predominantly in the industrials, utilities and financials sectors with maturities between five and 10 years.
Looking at the ETF’s current portfolio constitution, investors get bond exposure to companies like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX), Anheuser-Busch InBev (NYSE: BUD), and Pfizer (NYSE: PFE). That diversified investment-grade mix helps support VCIT’s higher yield relative to Treasury-focused bond funds.
Because of its corporate exposure, the VCIT is marginally more volatile than the BSV, with a beta of 0.33 versus a beta of 0.09, respectively. That has contributed to a one-year loss of around 6%, but a about a 6% gain from its five-year low in October 2022.
But what draws investors to the fund is its dividend. The VCIT has a TTM yield of 5.02%, or $3.97 per share annually, paid in monthly installments.
The article “Treasury Yields Hit a 19-Year High—These 2 Bond ETFs Offer Monthly Income” was originally published by MarketBeat.