iShares Broad USD High Yield Corporate Bond ETF (USHY)

How has USHY done since 2017?#

From October 2017 to October 2026, USHY returned about 4.4% a year. The S&P 500 returned about 14.7% a year over the same dates. Say you put in $10,000 at the start. It would have been worth about $14,716 at the end, with every dividend reinvested.

USHY returns by month and year#

USHY rose in 71 of its 109 months (65%). Its best month was July 2022, at 6.6%. Its worst was March 2020, at −11.8%.

How risky is USHY compared with the S&P 500?#

Measured from October 2021 to October 2026, on the days both traded.

• Beta 0.32. When the S&P 500 moved 1% in a day, USHY tended to move about 0.32%.
• Correlation 0.75. USHY moved with the S&P 500 some of the time.
• Up and down months. In months the S&P 500 rose, USHY rose 38% as much on average. In months it fell, USHY fell 46% as much.

Is USHY above its 200-day average?#

USHY closed 1.1% below its 200-day average on October 16, 2026. A rule that holds USHY only above that average would be out of it today.

What was USHY’s worst drop?#

A drawdown is how far a fund falls from its last high point. USHY’s worst fall was −22.4%, from February 14, 2020 to March 23, 2020. It got back to that high on October 12, 2020. On October 16, 2026 it was 2.7% below its highest close.

What does USHY hold?#

This fund owns about 1,900 bonds from companies with lower credit ratings. These are often called junk bonds. They pay more interest, but some companies may fail to pay back what they owe.

It tracks the ICE BofA US High Yield Constrained Index. It had 1,902 holdings as of October 15, 2026, according to iShares (BlackRock).

What is the USHY expense ratio?#

USHY charges 0.08% a year. An expense ratio is the yearly fee a fund takes to run itself. On $10,000, a 0.08% fee comes to about $8 a year. Of the 162 ETFs on Tactfolio, 60% charge more.

You never get a bill for it. The fund takes the fee out of its own value a little each day.

Which Tactfolio strategies hold USHY?#

No classic strategy holds USHY yet. You can add it to your own rules in the builder and see how they would have done.

How does USHY compare with similar ETFs?#

Funds that can stand in for USHY:

• JNK: State Street SPDR Bloomberg High Yield Bond ETF, 0.4% a year
• HYG: iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF, 0.49% a year
• VCIT: Vanguard Intermediate-Term Corporate Bond ETF, 0.03% a year
• LQD: iShares iBoxx $ Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF, 0.14% a year

See all 4 USHY alternatives, compared on the same dates as USHY.

Test USHY in your own rules#

Tactfolio is a platform where you build rules-based investing strategies, backtest them on decades of real prices, share them, and run them automatically in your own Alpaca account. Open the builder, add USHY, and see how a rule such as “hold it only above its 200-day average” would have done. Strategies run on daily prices and hold US stocks and ETFs only.

The details#

Prices come from Tactfolio’s stored daily prices for USHY and SPY. Each close is adjusted for splits, and dividends are reinvested on the day the fund pays them out. CAGR is the steady yearly return that turns the starting value into the ending value. Volatility is the yearly standard deviation of daily returns. Beta and correlation compare daily returns with the S&P 500 over the same dates.

Fund facts come from iShares (BlackRock). We checked them on October 17, 2026. Read what a backtest simulates and how to read drawdown and CAGR for more on these measures.