First Trust Smith Opportunistic Fixed Income ETF
First Trust Exchange-Traded Fund VIII · 1 share class
Fund classification
Classified from what the fund holds · as of 2026 Q2
First Trust Smith Opportunistic Fixed Income ETF is an actively managed U.S. bond ETF.
- Asset class
- Bonds
- Region
- United States
- Management
- Actively managed
- Fund type
- ETF
- Credit quality
- Investment grade
- Rate sensitivity
- Intermediate duration
Fund profile
As filed in the prospectus · 2025 Q4
The investment objective of the First Trust Smith Opportunistic Fixed Income ETF (the Fund ) is to seek to maximize long-term total return.
The fund is managed by sub-adviser Smith Capital Investors, which selects fixed income securities across government bonds, mortgage-backed securities, corporate debt, bank loans, and high-yield bonds, focusing on areas it judges relatively attractive based on quality, sector, coupon, and maturity. Smith Capital adjusts risk exposure across market cycles using macroeconomic analysis and bottom-up credit research to identify securities with strong risk-adjusted return potential. The fund may invest up to 35% in below-investment-grade debt, up to 20% in emerging market securities, and up to 30% in non-agency mortgage and asset-backed securities. Because portfolio returns depend on the sub-adviser's security selections and its judgments about market cycles and valuations, results will diverge from broad fixed income benchmarks.
| Share class | Expense ratio |
|---|---|
| FIXD | 0.65% |
Portfolio turnover 384.00% · as of 2025 Q4
Allocation
Asset groups · long / short shown separately, never netted · 2026 Q2
| Bonds | 77.47% |
| Securitized | 20.08% |
| Loans | 1.04% |
| Stocks | 0.42% |
| Cash & short-term | 0.02% |
Sector allocation
The same holdings as Allocation above, grouped by market sector instead of asset type · as of 2026 Q2
| Securitized | 20.3% |
| Government | 18.5% |
| Other | 16.1% |
| Financials | 15.7% |
| 12 smaller | 29.4% |
Government, Securitized and Cash are non-corporate buckets; International is foreign holdings we don’t sector-classify, and Other is the residual (held funds, unresolved names).
Latest quarter
What changed since the fund's previous filing
Largest new: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT ×3, Government National Mortgage Association, AMAZON.COM INC, BANK OF AMERICA CORP, FEDERAL HOME LOAN MORTGAGE CORP, Fnma Pass-Thru I
Largest exited: United States Treasury Notes ×5, Federal National Mortgage Association ×2, HCA Inc.
Return profile
Total return as filed — price change plus distributions reinvested · trailing figures to Apr 2026
May 2026 has been filed since the trailing figures were struck, so it is not in the table above or the curve — every figure here shares one cut-off, which is what makes them comparable with other funds.
Debt profile
What this fund holds — value-weighted across its bond and securitized long positions · as of 2026-05-31
Share of the fund's debt by how its coupon behaves — the fact that decides whether a rate move reaches this portfolio at all.
| Fixed rate | 98.0% |
| Floating rate | 1.8% |
| Zero-coupon or unclassified | 0.3% |
Share of the fund's debt value in each maturity band, shortest first.
| <1y | 0.4% |
| 1-3y | 5.7% |
| 3-5y | 12.5% |
| 5-10y | 30.3% |
| 10y+ | 47.2% |
| Unknown | 3.9% |
Based on what filers reported; a filer that never reported a flag also reads as none.
Risk profile
Interest-rate and credit-spread sensitivity, both in years · as of 2026Q2
Most of this fund’s sensitivity is to interest rates, with credit spreads carrying nearly as much.
Where the loss would come from. The two shocks are the same size, so this is the balance of the fund's two sensitivities rather than a bet on one moving more.
| Interest rates | 59% |
| Credit spreads | 41% |
Filers report the impact of a 0.01% move only, so the total is our own scaling of that one number and overstates the loss on most bonds — read it as approximate, never as precise. The two sensitivities overlap rather than add up: they measure the same positions against different shocks, which is why the durations above are shown side by side and never summed.
Share of the fund's spread duration carried by each credit tier.
| Investment grade | +4.04 yr |
| High yield | +0.43 yr |
Share of duration at each point, shortest first. A positive figure loses value when spreads widen; a negative one offsets — a credit hedge.
| 3 mo | 0.03 yr | 0% |
| 1 yr | 0.44 yr | 7% |
| 5 yr | 1.62 yr | 25% |
| 10 yr | 2.88 yr | 45% |
| 30 yr | 1.42 yr | 22% |
| 3 mo | 0.01 yr | 0% |
| 1 yr | 0.29 yr | 6% |
| 5 yr | 2.53 yr | 56% |
| 10 yr | 1.53 yr | 34% |
| 30 yr | 0.11 yr | 3% |
The two bands measure the same positions against different shocks and do not add — a Treasury carries rate duration and no spread duration, a floating-rate credit the reverse. Rate tenors are also summed across every currency the fund discloses.
Show the numbers
| Tenor | Rate yrs | IG yrs | HY yrs | IG $/bp | HY $/bp |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 mo | +0.03 | +0.01 | +0.00 | $1.8k | $1.5k |
| 1 yr | +0.44 | +0.15 | +0.14 | $50.4k | $45.7k |
| 5 yr | +1.62 | +2.27 | +0.25 | $754.0k | $84.1k |
| 10 yr | +2.88 | +1.50 | +0.04 | $497.7k | $11.7k |
| 30 yr | +1.42 | +0.11 | +0.00 | $36.5k | $934 |
Dollar change per 1bp of spread movement, as filed and sign-anchored. A blank cell was not filed; a zero was.
Holdings
By % of NAV · equity positions carry filed share counts · every resolvable issuer links to its company page
| Ticker | Issuer | %NAV | Value | Shares |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.63% · due 2045-11-15 | 3.37% | $111.98M | — |
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.63% · due 2055-11-15 | 3.21% | $106.45M | — |
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.88% · due 2045-08-15 | 2.40% | $79.67M | — |
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.75% · due 2056-02-15 | 2.16% | $71.78M | — |
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.13% · due 2029-10-31 | 2.11% | $70.16M | — |
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.75% · due 2055-08-15 | 1.97% | $65.46M | — |
| — | UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - BUREAU OF THE PUBLIC DEBT4.38% · due 2036-05-15 | 1.94% | $64.21M | — |
| — | BOEING COMPANY (THE)7.01% · due 2064-05-01 | 1.07% | $35.37M | — |
| — | GILDAN ACTIVEWEAR INC5.40% · due 2035-10-07 | 0.81% | $26.89M | — |
| — | RTX CORP6.10% · due 2034-03-15 | 0.74% | $24.42M | — |
Top 10 positions are 19.78% of net assets, top 25 28.85%, across 204 issuers.
See more of this fund's book
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