Exchange Traded Bonds

With Fixed Interest being an important part of one’s portfolio, I wanted to get your opinion on XTBs or Exchange Traded Bonds? I have used ETFs in the past to get exposure to get exposure to Bonds and High Interest but the XTB look interesting (e.g. YTMAWA, YTMQF3).

Regards

 

A: Thanks for the question.

Maybe – if you are comfortable with individual bond credit risk, and think that interest rates aren’t going to rise that quickly.

A couple of points to note:

  1. You are investing in a trust, which owns the underlying bonds;
  2. The product issuer takes a margin of around 40bp;
  3. Secondary market liquidity depends on the market makers (I haven’t been able to assess this); and
  4. YTMQF3 is a trust that invests in a  5 year corporate bond from Qantas. The underlying bond is trading in the secondary market at a yield to maturity of around 3.76%pa, the underling yield on the XTB is around 3.30% pa. I am not sure that this sounds particularly exciting, given the rate you can probably find on a 5 year term deposit.

The other code you quoted – YTMAWA – doesn’t appear to be correct.

Like any financial  product, suggest you read the PDS carefully.

regards


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