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CLOA - iShares AAA CLO Active ETF
CLOA is BlackRock's actively managed entry into AAA-rated CLO investing, targeting USD-denominated senior CLO tranches for floating-rate structured credit income.
CLOA total return
Total return (Yahoo adjusted close—dividends and splits per Yahoo), normalized to $10,000 at first available trade date. Educational only.
Strategy
CLOA invests in USD-denominated CLOs rated AAA at the senior tranche level: the highest-quality layer of structured credit, sitting atop the capital structure of a diversified pool of leveraged corporate loans. BlackRock's active selection across CLO managers, vintages, and underlying loan sectors aims to optimize yield pickup versus short-term rates while keeping the portfolio inside the AAA envelope.
Like JAAA, CLOA benefits from the floating-rate coupon structure: distributions reset monthly with SOFR, eliminating duration sensitivity. Spread compression and deal-level selection drive incremental return. The fund is smaller than JAAA, which can mean slightly wider bid/ask spreads on individual CLO positions, but BlackRock's market access and primary-deal relationships offset some of that size disadvantage.
Manager and Issuer Pedigree
CLOA launched in January 2023 on BlackRock's iShares platform, the world's largest ETF issuer by assets. The iShares active fixed-income team manages the fund, drawing on BlackRock's global credit research infrastructure, primary-deal access to new CLO issuance, and proprietary risk analytics. The iShares active platform now spans a broad range of actively managed bond strategies in an ETF wrapper.
BlackRock managed approximately $11.6 trillion in assets under management as of end of 2024 (per annual earnings filings), making it the largest asset manager in the world. Its fixed-income platform is one of the deepest in the industry, with relationships across every major CLO deal manager. That scale provides early access to new deals and liquidity that smaller securitized-credit teams cannot easily replicate.
Outperformance
Outperforms when short rates are elevated and CLO spreads are stable: the floating coupon compounds carry above T-bills each month, and BlackRock's primary-market access allows CLOA to participate in new deals at competitive spreads rather than buying seasoned paper in the secondary market.
Underperforms when CLO secondary market liquidity contracts sharply, forcing mark-to-market spreads wider on thinly priced positions. As a newer and smaller fund vs JAAA, spread impact on individual trades is somewhat larger. Favorable tape is the same as for any AAA CLO fund: a high-short-rate, orderly-credit environment where the structural seniority of AAA tranches is never approached.
Similar ETFs
| Ticker | Name | Score | MER | AUM |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLOA | iShares AAA CLO Active ETF | B | 0.20% | ~$2.1B |
| JAAA | Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF | C | 0.20% | ~$27B |
Official ETF page
Read the official ETF page for current NAV, holdings, and documents: iShares (CLOA).