A sound investment process and strong management team underpin iShares Interest Rate Hdg L/T Corp BdETF's Morningstar Medalist Rating of Silver. The portfolio maintains a cost advantage over competitors, priced within the lowest fee quintile among peers.  

 The strategy's effective investment philosophy supports an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Independent of the rating, analysis of the strategy's portfolio shows it has maintained a significant overweight position in corporate bonds and an underweight in AAA rated bonds compared with category peers. The strategy’s management team earns an Above Average People Pillar rating. The strategy's parent organization earns the firm an Above Average Parent Pillar rating. People Pillar and Parent Pillar ratings for this strategy are indirectly assigned by a Morningstar analyst rather than algorithmically derived. Please see the notes following each pillar section for more details. The details of assigning methods can be found in each pillar section.

Analyst Rating

iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

iShares Interest Rate Hdg L/T Corp BdETF earns an Above Average Process Pillar rating. Morningstar's evaluation of this security's process aims to determine the likelihood that it will outperform its Morningstar Category index on a risk-adjusted basis over the long term. The most notable contributor to the rating is that this fund tracks an index. Historical data, such as Morningstar's Active/Passive Barometer, finds that passively managed funds have generally outperformed their active counterparts, especially over longer time horizons. The parent firm's five-year risk-adjusted success ratio of 55% also strengthens the process. The measure indicates the percentage of a firm's funds that survived and outperformed their respective category's median Morningstar Risk-Adjusted Return for the period. Their respectable success ratio suggests that the firm does well for investors and that this fund may benefit from that. Lastly, the process is limited by its parent firm's risk-adjusted performance, as shown by the firm's average 10-year Morningstar Rating of 3.1 stars. A lower star rating suggests that the firm has struggled to outperform on a risk-adjusted basis.

The investment strategy as stated in the fund's prospectus is: 

The investment seeks to track the investment results of the BlackRock Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond Index designed to minimize the interest rate exposure of a portfolio composed of U.S. dollar-denominated, investment-grade corporate bonds with remaining maturities greater than ten years.  The fund seeks to achieve its investment objective by investing, under normal circumstances, at least 80% of its net assets, plus the amount of any borrowings for investment purposes, and in component securities and instruments in the fund’s underlying index and/or bonds included in the underlying index of the underlying fund.  

 This strategy has a 7.2% 12-month yield, higher than its average peer's 4.8%. Plus, its 30-day SEC yield (a standardized, point-in-time estimate of the fund’s future income return) sits at 4.4%. Higher yields tend to indicate higher credit risk. But that isn't always the case. Over the past 12 months, the average yield of the fund has been higher than the average yield of its Morningstar Category peers. The portfolio's average surveyed credit quality is on par with peers, with both the fund and the average being rated A. In terms of long-term interest-rate risk, this strategy is on par with peers. The longer a strategy's duration, the more sensitive it is to shifts in interest rates. This fund, with a 0.0-year duration, is expected to gain 0.0% of its net asset value if interest rates drop by 1 percentage point, and vice versa. This makes the fund much less sensitive to interest rate fluctuations than the broader bond market.

Above Average

Process

iShares Interest Rate Hdg L/T Corp BdETF benefits considerably from its team, earning it an Above Average People Pillar rating. There are two managers listed on the fund: Karen Uyehara, James Mauro. The team is well equipped, with an average of 14 years of portfolio management experience. Together, they manage a total of 114 strategies, with a Silver asset-weighted average Morningstar Medalist Rating, demonstrating their potential to deliver positive alpha relative to the category median in aggregate.  

 Note: This People Pillar rating is indirectly assigned by an analyst. Morningstar analysts evaluate the People Pillar for passive products at the brand level and may also differentiate by asset class. There is at least one other passive strategy at the firm that is covered by a Morningstar analyst, so the People Pillar rating of the fund is inherited from the rating that the Morningstar analyst assigned to investment vehicles under the same brand name.

People

BlackRock offers compelling options across asset classes and vehicles. It earns an Above Average rating for Parent. 
The firm’s approximately USD 8 trillion in assets under management, as of Sept. 30, 2022, gives it unparalleled scale and influence. It is a market-leading index fund provider globally, and its iShares exchange-traded fund franchise offers a low-cost lineup of core funds that investors can use to build a well-diversified portfolio for dirt cheap. The firm can be more adventurous in its ETF launches than some peers, so not everything it launches is appropriate for the masses. As a result, it is likely to have more ETF closures than peers that stick to the basic building blocks.  
The firm’s active fixed-income and multi-asset efforts also stand out as some of the best in the industry. Those benefit from BlackRock’s commitment to building a first-class risk management system via its Aladdin analytics software. The software is also available for sale to other firms and has proved to be a popular option for competitors, a testament to its usefulness. 
More recently, the firm has shifted its focus to ESG offerings and incorporating ESG across its investment lineup, leading to a political backlash in the United States.
BlackRock isn’t the best at everything it tries to do, but retail investors, financial advisors, and large institutions could all build robust portfolios using BlackRock’s products.

Parent

iShares Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF

IGBH tracks an index that holds the iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF (IGLB) and uses derivatives to hedge out interest rate risk.

iShares Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF is worth considering for hedging interest rate risk in a bond portfolio. IGBH mitigates interest rate risk and offers exposure to long-term corporate U.S. investment-grade bonds. The fund's holdings are concentrated in iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF and have significant exposure to the Consumer Non-Cyclical sector.

IGBH: Great Product But Late Cycle For It

PIMCO Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

Aptus Defined Risk ETF

Fidelity Corporate Bond ETF

Franklin Investment Grade Corporate ETF

Goldman Sachs Access Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

Inspire Corporate Bond Impact ETF

Principal Investment Grade Corporate Active ETF

iShares Investment Grade Bond Factor ETF

iShares 5-10 Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

John Hancock Corporate Bond ETF

American Century Diversified Corporate Bond ETF

FlexShares Credit-Scored US Long Corporate Bond Index Fund

iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

iShares BBB Rated Corporate Bond ETF

iShares Interest Rate Hedged Corporate Bond ETF

iShares Inflation Hedged Corporate Bond ETF

Mobeus Income & Growth 2 VCT PLC

Invesco Fundamental Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF

iShares Aaa-A Rated Corporate Bond ETF

Schwab 5-10 Year Corporate Bond ETF

FlexShares Credit-Scored US Corporate Bond Index Fund

SPDR Portfolio Corporate Bond

M&A was almost dormant in 2023. In the US, as a proportion of the market value of the benchmark equity indices, it fell to its lowest level in 20 years, according to McKinsey. Credit investors are not traditionally supposed to be fans of M&A, and it's true we are wary of leveraging M&A, where debt is loaded onto balance sheets to buy competitors. We are seeing a comeback for M&A that we think is likely to continue through 2024.

The Credit Opportunity In M&A

SPDR Portfolio Long Term Corporate Bond ETF

As the Fed continues to hike interest rates to curb inflation, the corporate bond market is experiencing an increase in default rates.

Bet on Investment Grade Bond ETFs Amid Rising Corporate Default

The iShares Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF invests based on the BlackRock Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond Index. The iShares 10+ Year Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF invests based on the ICE BofA 10+ Year US Corporate Index.

IGBH Vs. IGLB: Hedging A Bond Portfolio Smooths The Ride

iShares MSCI Japan ETF

iShares Core MSCI Emerging Markets ETF

iShares US Infrastructure ETF

iShares Global Infrastructure ETF

iShares Core S&P 500 ETF

iShares MBS ETF

Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF

In the fourth quarter of 2022, NorthCoast added an infrastructure ETF and a corporate bond ETF to its holdings. The post NorthCoast Takes On Corporate Bond And Infrastructure ETFs appeared first on Investor's Business Daily.

NorthCoast Takes On Corporate Bond And Infrastructure ETFs

The U.S. economy continues to recover with the help of a vaccine deployment, putting upward pressure on interest rates and warranting interests in assets like the iShares Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF (IGBH). The fund seeks to mitigate the interest rate risk of a portfolio composed of U.S. dollar-denominated investment-grade corporate bonds with [.

News for iShares Interest Rate Hedged Long-Term Corporate Bond ETF ETF (IGBH)