All Weather Fixed Income Portfolio?

Lately, I've been getting emails promoting the Prospera Income ETF (THRV) which started trading on Sept 30, 2025. The big idea is that it blends an income strategy with a small options overlay for protection to create an all weather income fund. The options strategy doesn't appear to be about enhancing the income. 

Using closed end funds (CEFs) is always interesting. It can be a tricky niche and anytime I see a fund using them, I appreciate the effort being put in. The results may be great or poor, I have no idea but someone is trying to do some work. 

The fund benchmarks to an equal weight mix of SPDR High Dividend ETF (SPYD). iShares Aggregate (AGG) and iShares High Yield (HYG). Backtesting THRV probably isn't productive, it's only three months old and being actively managed, there's no way to know what they would have done previously but we can play around with the pie chart in a backtest and see if there's anything to take from their process. 

I built out the following to replicate the pie chart.

THRV might be constrained to not use mutual funds but we are not. FLOT is a client holding. CEFS is an ETF that owns closed end funds. SHRIX yields 13% per Yahoo Finance, SRLN yields 7.5%, FLOT at 4.8%, CEFS is just under 7% and ETV which I am using for the "equity" sleeve yields 8%. The literature for THRV says it yields 7.5%.

Testfo.io's output didn't look right so I ran it through Portfoliovisualizer instead.

By using CEFS, we outsourced the CEF exposure for a big swath of complexity. Most of the holdings are complex strategies so that is a drawback but the result has a whopper of a yield and a relatively smooth ride. The replication might be a little heavy on credit risk, senior loans and CEFs probably have some overlap there in terms of risk taken. In real life I'd never consider anything close to 20% in single funds, I'd want to diversify more than that. 

GlobalX listed a suite of what appears to be Bulletshares-like products for zero coupon bonds. 

In each fund, all of the issues mature in the year of the name of the fund. for example, in ZCBF, the issues in that fund mature at different points in 2034. These aren't laddered products, they are products to build your own ladder. 

I like that the target maturity/ladder space is evolving. This seems like one of several spaces where fund companies are trying to move toward a more useful solution. I'll have to study these some before really saying anything about them beyond that pound for pound, zeros are very volatile but I am intrigued enough to want to try to learn more. 

The information, analysis and opinions expressed herein reflect our judgment and opinions as of the date of writing and are subject to change at any time without notice. They are not intended to constitute legal, tax, securities or investment advice or a recommended course of action in any given situation.