State Street Swings into Short-Term Bonds

State Street Global Advisors launched a short-term corporate bond exchange-traded fund.

The SPDR Barclays Capital Short Term Corporate Bond ETF, which has an annual expense ratio of 0.1245%, began trading Thursday on the NYSE ARCA exchange. The ETF is designed to improve access to investment grade short-term corporate bonds by tracking the price and yield performance of the Barclays Capital U.S. One to Three Year Corporate Bond Index.

The index includes corporate issues that have a remaining maturity of greater than or equal to one year and less than three years, are rated investment grade, and have $250 million or more of outstanding face value. As of Nov. 30, there were 572 issues included in the Index with an average maturity of 1.91 years.

The fund enhances State Street’s growing family of fixed income ETFs. As of Nov. 30, SSgA Funds Management Inc., the adviser to the SPDR Barclays Capital Short Term Corporate Bond ETF, had $9.2 billion of assets under management in 18 bond ETFs.

State Street Global Advisors, which is a unit of State Street Corp. of Boston, is the second largest ETF providers. It had $174 billion of total ETF assets under management as of Nov. 30, or 23.5% market share.

In November, assets held in exchange-traded funds increased 7.3% to $739 billion in November from a month earlier, according to monthly data by State Street Global Advisors.

Overall, ETF assets have increased this year. In November, assets held in exchange-traded funds increased 7.3% to $739 billion in November from a month earlier, according to monthly data by State Street Global Advisors.