State Street® Blackstone Senior Loan ETF

What this fund is

State Street® Blackstone Senior Loan ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker SRLN (ISIN US78467V6083). It lets you buy a basket of holdings in a single trade, spreading your money across them rather than one company. In plain terms it is about lending to governments and companies in return for regular interest, which tends to be steadier than shares but grows more slowly, spread across its target market. It follows the Morningstar LSTA U.S.

Leveraged Loan Index index (passive investing): it tracks the market rather than relying on a manager, keeping running costs down, and its largest holdings include Hopper Merger Sub Inc aka Hologic 04/07/2033, Discovery Global Holdings Inc aka WarnerMedia Holdings Inc/WarnerMedia/Warner Brothers Discover 06/03/2033 and TransDigm Inc 03/22/2030. With about 729 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 16.3%), your money is diversified rather than concentrated in a handful of names. Funds like this are often used as the steadier, lower-swing part of a portfolio — the ballast that cushions the ups and downs of shares. Its ongoing charge (TER) is 0.7% a year — about €70 a year on a €10,000 holding, taken automatically from the fund.

It holds the underlying investments directly (physical replication); it is domiciled in the United States and trades in USD. Its price has swung about 3.5% over the past year — a gauge of how much the value moves, not a judgement of quality. It launched in 2013. As with any investment, its value can go down as well as up, and past performance is not a guide to future results. (Fund data sourced from SPDR.)