WisdomTree 1-3 Year Laddered Treasury Fund – USSH (NASDAQ)
Summary Prospectus – March 12, 2024
Before you invest in the Fund, as defined below, you may want to review the Fund’s prospectus and statement of additional information (“SAI”), which contain more information about the Fund and the risks of investing in the Fund. The Fund’s current prospectus and SAI are incorporated by reference into this summary prospectus. You can find the Fund’s prospectus and SAI, reports to shareholders, as well as other information about the Fund, online at www.wisdomtree.com/investments/resource-library/prospectus-regulatory-reports. You may also obtain this information at no charge by calling 1-866-909-9473 or by sending an e-mail request to getinfo@wisdomtree.com.
Investment Objective
The WisdomTree 1-3 Year Laddered Treasury Fund seeks to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Bloomberg US Treasury 1-3 Year Laddered Index (the “Index”).
Fees and Expenses of the Fund
The following table describes the fees and expenses you may pay if you buy, hold and sell shares of the Fund. You may pay other fees, such as brokerage commissions and other fees to financial intermediaries, which are not reflected in the table and example below. The fees are expressed as a percentage of the Fund’s average net assets.
| Shareholder Fees (fees paid directly from your investment) | None |
| Annual Fund Operating Expenses (expenses that you pay each year as a percentage of the value of your investment) | |
| Management Fees | 0.15% |
| Distribution and/or Service (12b-1) Fees | None |
| Other Expenses | 0.00%1 |
| Total Annual Fund Operating Expenses | 0.15% |
| 1 | Other Expenses are based on estimated amounts for the current fiscal year. |
Example
This example is intended to help you compare the cost of investing in the Fund with the cost of investing in other funds. The example assumes you invest $10,000 in the Fund for the time periods indicated and then redeem or hold all of your shares at the end of those periods. The example also assumes that your investment has a 5% return each year and that the Fund’s operating expenses remain the same. Although your actual costs may be higher or lower, based on these assumptions, your costs would be:
| 1 Year | 3 Years | |
| $15 | $48 |
Portfolio Turnover
The Fund pays transaction costs, such as commissions, when it buys and sells securities (or “turns over” its portfolio). A higher portfolio turnover rate may indicate higher transaction costs and may result in higher taxes when Fund shares are held in a taxable account. These costs, which are not reflected in the Fund’s Annual Fund Operating Expenses or in the example, affect the Fund’s performance. The Fund is newly organized and therefore, portfolio turnover information is not yet available.
Principal Investment Strategies of the Fund
The Fund employs a “passive management” – or indexing – investment approach designed to track the performance of the Index. The Fund generally uses a representative sampling strategy to achieve its investment objective, meaning it generally will invest in a sample of the securities in the Index whose risk, return and other
| WisdomTree Trust Prospectus 1 |
characteristics resemble the risk, return and other characteristics of the Index as a whole. Under normal circumstances, the Fund invests at least 80% of its net assets (plus the amount of any borrowings for investment purposes) in U.S. Treasuries that have a remaining maturity of one to three years and investments that have economic characteristics (i.e., risk and return characteristics) that are substantially similar to the economic characteristics of such Treasuries. The Index is composed of fixed-rate coupon U.S. Treasury securities maturing in one to three years or with remaining maturities between one and three years.
The Index, which was created and is maintained by Bloomberg Index Services Limited (the “Index Provider”), is designed to measure the performance of a portfolio composed of public obligations of the U.S. Treasury that have a nominal fixed rate coupon and remaining maturities of one to three years (the “maturity range”), excluding amounts held by the Federal Reserve system. Treasury bills, inflation-linked bonds, floating rate bonds, Separate Trading of Registered Interest and Principal of Securities (“STRIPS”), and state and local government series bonds are excluded from the Index. The Index employs a “laddering” approach to select its constituents. Each month the Index selects one Treasury security maturing in each month represented in the maturity range. If there are two or more Treasury securities within a given maturity month, then the most recently issued security is selected for inclusion in the Index. As a result, the Index generally will be composed of 24 constituent securities at each rebalance date (unless there are no eligible securities for a given maturity month). The constituent securities are equally weighted at the time of selection and at each reconstitution. The Index is reconstituted and rebalanced on a monthly basis. On each monthly reconstitution date, the constituent securities with the shortest amount of time to maturity (i.e., less than one year) are removed from the Index and new securities with a longer amount of time to maturity (i.e., three years) are added to the Index. Additionally, the most recently issued two-year Treasury note is likely to replace a more seasoned note at the two-year maturity point of the Index.
To the extent the Index concentrates (i.e., holds more than 25% of its net assets) in the securities of companies assigned to a particular industry or group of industries, the Fund will concentrate its investments in such industry or group of industries to approximately the same extent as the Index.
Principal Risks of Investing in the Fund
You can lose money on your investment in the Fund. While certain of the risks are prioritized in terms of their relevance to the Fund’s investment strategies, most risks are presented in alphabetical order. This ordering approach is designed to both facilitate an investor’s understanding of the Fund’s risks and enable an investor to easily locate and compare risks among funds. Each risk summarized below is considered a “principal risk” of investing in the Fund, regardless of the order in which it appears. Some or all of these risks may adversely affect the Fund’s net asset value per share (“NAV”), trading price, yield, total return and/or ability to meet its investment objective. For more information about the risks of investing in the Fund, see the sections in the Fund’s Prospectus titled “Additional Principal Risk Information About the Fund” and “Additional Non-Principal Risk Information.”
| ■ | U.S. Treasury Obligations Risk. U.S. Treasury obligations may differ from other securities in their interest rates, maturities, times of issuance and other characteristics and may provide relatively lower returns than those of other securities. Similar to other issuers, changes to the financial condition or credit rating of the U.S. government may cause the value of the Fund’s U.S. Treasury obligations to decline. |
| ■ | Interest Rate Risk. Interest rate risk is the risk that fixed income securities will decline in value because of an increase in interest rates and changes to other factors, such as perception of an issuer’s creditworthiness. Interest rates may change suddenly or unexpectedly and have unpredictable impacts on the financial markets and the Fund’s investments. To the extent that the Fund holds fixed income securities with longer durations, such securities generally are subject to greater interest rate risk. |
| ■ | U.S. Government Securities Risk. Obligations issued or guaranteed by the U.S. government, its agencies, authorities and instrumentalities and backed by the full faith and credit of the United States only guarantee principal and interest will be timely paid to holders of the securities. The U.S. government, its agencies, authorities and instrumentalities do not guarantee the market value of such obligation and, in fact, the market values of such obligations may fluctuate. |
| ■ | Investment Risk. As with all investments, an investment in the Fund is subject to loss, including the possible loss of the entire principal amount of an investment, over short or long periods of time. |
| ■ | Market Risk. The trading prices of securities and other instruments fluctuate in response to a variety of factors, such as economic, financial or political events that impact the entire market, market segments, or specific issuers. The Fund’s NAV and market price may fluctuate significantly in response to these and other factors. As a result, an investor could lose money over short or long periods of time. |
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| ■ | Shares of the Fund May Trade at Prices Other Than NAV. As with all ETFs, Fund shares may be bought and sold in the secondary market at market prices. The market prices of the Fund’s shares in the secondary market generally differ from the Fund’s daily NAV, and there may be times when the market price of the shares is more than the NAV (premium) or less than the NAV (discount). This risk is heightened in times of market volatility or periods of steep market declines. Additionally, in stressed market conditions, the market for the Fund’s shares may become less liquid in response to deteriorating liquidity in the markets for the Fund’s underlying portfolio holdings. |
| ■ | Cash Redemption Risk. The Fund generally redeems shares for cash or otherwise includes cash as part of its redemption proceeds. The Fund may be required to sell or unwind portfolio investments to obtain the cash needed to distribute redemption proceeds. This may cause the Fund to recognize a capital gain that it might not have recognized if it had made a redemption in kind. As a result, the Fund may pay out higher annual capital gain distributions than if the Fund redeemed shares in kind. |
| ■ | Credit Risk. The financial condition of an issuer of a debt security or other instrument may cause such issuer to default, become unable to pay interest or principal due or otherwise fail to honor its obligations or cause such issuer to be perceived (whether by market participants, rating agencies, pricing services or otherwise) as being in such situations. The value of an investment in the Fund may change quickly and without warning in response to issuer defaults, changes in the credit ratings of the Fund’s portfolio investments and/or perceptions related thereto. |
| ■ | Cybersecurity Risk. The Fund and its service providers may be susceptible to operational and information security risks resulting from a breach in cybersecurity, including cyber-attacks. A breach in cybersecurity, intentional or unintentional, may adversely impact the Fund in many ways, including, but not limited to, disruption of the Fund’s operational capacity, loss of proprietary information, theft or corruption of data, denial-of-service attacks on websites or network resources, and the unauthorized release of confidential information. Cyber-attacks affecting the Fund’s third-party service providers, market makers, institutional investors authorized to purchase and redeem shares directly from the Fund (i.e., Authorized Participants), or the issuers of securities in which the Fund invests may subject the Fund to many of the same risks associated with direct cybersecurity breaches. |
| ■ | Geopolitical Risk. The United States may experience security concerns, war, threats of war, aggression and/or conflict, terrorism, economic uncertainty, sanctions or the threat of sanctions, natural and environmental disasters, the spread of infectious illness, widespread disease or other public health issues and/or systemic market dislocations that lead to increased short-term market volatility and have adverse long-term effects on the U.S. and world economies and markets generally, each of which may negatively impact the Fund’s investments. |
| ■ | Income Risk. The Fund is subject to the risk that its income will decline because of falling interest rates. |
| ■ | Index and Data Risk. The Fund seeks to track the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Index. The Index may not perform as intended. The Index Provider has the right to make adjustments to the composition and/or operation of the Index or to cease making the Index available without regard to the particular interests of the Fund or its shareholders. If the computers or other facilities of the Index Provider, data providers and/or relevant stock exchange malfunction for any reason, calculation and dissemination of Index values may be delayed and trading in Fund shares may be suspended for a period of time. Errors in Index data, Index calculations and/or the construction of the Index may occur from time to time and may not be identified and/or corrected by the Index Provider or other applicable party for a period of time or at all, which may have an adverse impact on the Fund and its shareholders. The potential risk of a continuing error may be particularly heightened in the case of the Index, which is generally not used as a benchmark by other funds or managers. |
| ■ | Investment Style Risk. The Fund invests in the securities included in, or representative of, the Index regardless of their investment merit. The Fund does not attempt to outperform the Index or take defensive positions in declining markets. As a result, the Fund’s performance may be adversely affected by a general decline in the market segments relating to the Index. |
| ■ | Non-Correlation Risk. As with all index funds, the performance of the Fund and that of the Index may differ from each other for a variety of reasons. For example, the Fund incurs operating expenses and portfolio transaction costs, while also managing cash flows and potential operational inefficiencies, not incurred by the Index. In addition, when markets are volatile, the ability to sell securities at fair value prices may be adversely impacted and may result in additional trading costs and/or increase the Index tracking risk. The Fund’s use of sampling techniques also may affect its ability to achieve close correlation with the Index. |
| WisdomTree Trust Prospectus 3 |
| ■ | Non-Diversification Risk. The Fund is considered to be non-diversified, which means that it may invest more of its assets in the securities of a single issuer or a smaller number of issuers than if it were a diversified fund. To the extent the Fund invests a significant percentage of its assets in a limited number of issuers, the Fund is subject to the risks of investing in those few issuers, and may be more susceptible to a single adverse economic or regulatory occurrence. As a result, changes in the market value of a single security could cause greater fluctuations in the value of Fund shares than would occur in a diversified fund. |
| ■ | Portfolio Turnover Risk. The Fund’s investment strategy may result in a high portfolio turnover rate. Higher portfolio turnover may result in the Fund paying higher transaction costs and the distribution of additional capital gains, which may generate greater tax liabilities for shareholders who hold the shares in taxable accounts. Increased transaction costs and distributions of capital gains may negatively affect the Fund’s performance. |
Fund Performance
The Fund is new and therefore does not yet have a performance history. Updated performance information for the Fund will be available online on the Fund’s website at www.wisdomtree.com/investments.
Management
Investment Adviser and Sub-Adviser
WisdomTree Asset Management Inc. (“WisdomTree Asset Management” or the “Adviser”) serves as investment adviser to the Fund. Mellon Investments Corporation (the “Sub-Adviser”) serves as the investment sub-adviser to the Fund.
Portfolio Managers
The Fund is managed by the Sub-Adviser’s Fixed Income Index Strategies Portfolio Management team. The individual members of the team jointly and primarily responsible for the day-to-day management of the Fund’s portfolio are identified below.
Nancy Rogers, CFA, Managing Director and Head of Fixed Income Index Portfolio Management, has been a portfolio manager of the Fund since its inception.
David Nieman, Vice President and Portfolio Manager, has been a portfolio manager of the Fund since its inception.
Gregg Lee, CFA, Senior Portfolio Manager, has been a portfolio manager of the Fund since its inception.
William Newton, CFA, Vice President, Portfolio Manager, has been a portfolio manager of the Fund since its inception.
Buying and Selling Fund Shares
The Fund is an ETF. This means that individual shares of the Fund are listed for trading on a national securities exchange, currently NASDAQ and may only be purchased and sold in the secondary market through a broker-dealer at market prices. Because Fund shares trade at market prices rather than NAV, shares may trade at a price greater than NAV (premium) or less than NAV (discount). In addition, an investor may incur costs attributable to the difference between the highest price a buyer is willing to pay to purchase shares (bid) and the lowest price a seller is willing to accept for shares (ask) when buying and selling shares in the secondary market (the “bid/ask spread”). Recent information regarding the Fund, including its NAV, market price, premiums and discounts, and bid/ask spreads, is available on the Fund’s website at www.wisdomtree.com/investments.
The Fund issues and redeems shares at NAV only in large blocks of shares (“Creation Units”), which only certain institutions or large investors (typically market makers or other broker-dealers) may purchase or redeem. The Fund issues and redeems Creation Units in exchange for a portfolio of securities and/or U.S. cash.
Tax Information
The Fund intends to make distributions that may be taxed as ordinary income, qualified dividend income, or capital gains.
Payments to Broker-Dealers and Other Financial Intermediaries
If you purchase shares of the Fund through a broker-dealer or other financial intermediary (such as a bank) (an “Intermediary”), WisdomTree Asset Management or its affiliates may pay Intermediaries for certain activities related to the Fund, including participation in activities that are designed to make Intermediaries more knowledgeable about exchange-traded products, including the Fund, or for other activities, such as marketing, educational training or other initiatives related to the sale or promotion of Fund shares. These payments may create a conflict
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of interest by influencing the Intermediary and your salesperson to recommend the Fund over another investment. Any such arrangements do not result in increased Fund expenses. Ask your salesperson or visit the Intermediary’s website for more information.
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WIS-USSH-SUM-0324