Interest rate hedged ETFs

Introduction

An interest rate hedged ETF is an ETF that buys fixed income securities (mostly bonds) and then hedges its interest rate exposure using swaps and derivatives or by shorting U.S. treasury futures or U.S. treasury bonds. The idea is that if interest rates rise, the value of the ETF's bonds will go down, but that loss will be offset by the gain from the short positions.

There are a number of interest rate hedged ETFs in our database:

Category	Count
Special Security Types	1
US Fixed Income	8
Total	9

Most interest rate hedged ETFs are relatively new:

Year of Inception	Count
2013	4
2014	2
2015	2
2017	1
Total	9

Note that there might have been even more ETFs launched then this table shows, as we are only displaying the launch dates of ETFs still active in our database. There might have been more ETFs that were launched during these years that have since been closed down by their sponsor.

Here are the interest rate hedged ETFs, if you want to read some examples of the approaches taken by these ETFs:

Symbol	Description	Inception Date	Market Cap	Actions
HYHG	ProShares High Yield—Interest Rate Hedged ETF	05/21/2013	$114,174,750	Analyze
IGHG	Investment Grade Bonds - Interest Rate Hedged ETF	11/05/2013	$367,121,745	Analyze
AGZD	WisdomTree Barclays U.S. Aggregate Bond Zero Duration ETF	12/18/2013	$229,755,000	Analyze
HYZD	WisdomTree BofA Merrill Lynch High Yield Bond Zero Duration ETF	12/18/2013	$159,896,000	Analyze
HYGH	iShares Interest Rate Hedged High Yield Bond ETF	05/27/2014	$132,591,030	Analyze
LQDH	iShares Interest Rate Hedged Corp Bd ETF	05/27/2014	$340,042,500	Analyze
EMBH	iShares Interest Rate Hedged Emerging Markets Bond ETF	07/22/2015	$7,404,530	Analyze
IGBH	iShares Interest Rate Hedged Long-term Corporate Bond ETF	07/22/2015	$90,402,000	Analyze
CEFS	Saba Closed-End Funds ETF	03/21/2017	$93,225,017	Analyze

Are these ETFs a good idea?

Most investors are worried about owning bonds and other fixed income securities if U.S. interest rates begin to increase over the next 5-10 years. Bonds have performed well as an asset class over the past twenty years because U.S. interest rates have been in a steady decline. Bonds go up in value as interest rates decline, and down in value as interest rates go up. So these interest rate hedged ETFs are clearly trying to address a valid investor concern.

But it is really hard to know if these ETFs are a good idea for long-term investors. We don't really know the long-term cost of permanently shorting U.S. treasury futures or U.S. treasury bonds. And we don't know if there are hidden costs related to shorting U.S. treasuries or U.S. treasury futures. It also doesn't really help much to look at the index data behind these ETFs. So it is difficult to make any kind of definitive conclusion about these interest rate hedged ETFs.

Who are the intended buyers of these ETFs? It is not clear. Short-term traders would probably prefer to make a pure play trade using one of the 8 inverse ETPs related to U.S. fixed income securities. These inverse ETPs allow traders to make a short-term profit on rising interest rates. View list of inverse U.S. fixed income ETFs.

Given all of the above, just be careful.

Other Strategies

Other ways that you can change your bond portfolio if you believe that U.S. interest rates will rise significantly over the next few years are discussed in our article ETFs for rising rates.

You can use our ETF screener to screen for ETFs that have a positive correlation to TNX.

All data is a live query from our database. The wording was last updated: 03/12/2021.