State Street® Ultra Short Term Bond ETF

What this fund is

State Street® Ultra Short Term Bond ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) from SPDR, traded under the ticker ULST (ISIN US78467V7073). One trade buys a whole basket of holdings, so your money is spread out instead of riding on a single company. In plain terms it is about very short-term, cash-like instruments, aimed at protecting your money and earning a little interest rather than growing it, spread across its target market. Rather than a manager picking stocks, it simply replicates the Bloomberg US Treasury Bellwether 3 Month Index index — the passive, low-cost approach, and its largest holdings include US TREASURY N/B 02/27 4.125, TREASURY BILL 07/26 0.00000 and SSI US GOV MONEY MARKET CLASS.

Spread across roughly 316 holdings (the ten largest ≈ 49.8%), no one position makes or breaks the fund. 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 0.2% a year — about €20 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 1.3% over the past year, which describes how much its price tends to move rather than whether it is good. 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.)