Through its new PureBeta suite, PowerShares has launched a bond ETF to help investors cheaply and easily access broad diversified exposure in the fixed-income market.
On Friday, Invesco PowerShares rolled out the PowerShares PureBeta US Aggregate Bond Portfolio (BATS: PBND), which comes with a low 0.05% expense ratio.
PBND tries to reflect the performance of the BofA Merrill Lynch US Broad Market Index, which is comprised of U.S. dollar-denominated, investment-grade debt securities, including U.S. Treasury notes and bonds, quasi-government securities, corporate securities, residential and commercial mortgage-backed securities and asset-backed securities.
Unlike its other fundamental or smart beta index-based ETF options that PowerShares is known for, the new PureBeta lineup consists of traditional beta-index ETF plays. While the new PowerShares ETFs are not anything new in the ETF space, the funds are among the cheapest options covering their respective benchmark indices. The competitive pricing may be one way for PowerShares to wrestle assets away from more established ETFs tracking the same benchmarks. The new ETFs’ price points are only a few basis points off from the cheapest ETFs in their respective categories as well.