State Street ETF Tied to New Corporate Bond Indexing

State Street Global Advisors has launched a new exchange-traded fund based on a corporate bond index weighted according to three quantitative measures: return on assets, interest coverage and current ratio.

The fund is the SPDR Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Bond ETF and seeks to track the performance of the Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Index. The index is made up of publicly issued U.S.-dollar denominated, investment-grade corporate issues that have $250 million or more of par amount outstanding.

“Despite some compression in spreads over the past year, corporate credit remains a very attractive asset class for investors,” said Kevin Anderson, global chief investment officer for fixed income and currency at SSgA. “The SPDR Barclays Capital Issuer Scored Corporate Bond ETF and forthcoming SSgA Issuer Scored Corporate Index Strategy strengthen our fixed income offering by providing investors and advisors with solutions that address the concerns some have with the allocation of capital in existing corporate credit index strategies.”