Macquarie Income Opportunities Active ETF (MQIO) — Review & Analysis

MQIO is the second-largest fund on this page with AUM of $3.11 billion as at May 2026 — but it isn't really a cash ETF in the way AAA or BILL are. MQIO is an actively managed short-duration credit fund holding a diversified portfolio of investment-grade Australian credit securities — corporate bonds, asset-backed securities, hybrid instruments. The 0.49% p.a. management fee is the highest in the cohort and reflects the active management overlay rather than pure passive deposit/bill tracking. Compare MQIO across the full cash cohort on our high interest cash ETF page.

The benchmark is the Bloomberg AusBond Bank Bill Index, but Macquarie's portfolio managers run an active mandate that typically holds short-dated credit at 1-2 year average duration rather than overnight cash. That extra duration is the source of MQIO's historical yield premium — generally 50-100bp above pure cash funds like AAA and BILL across the cycle.

The trade-off is mark-to-market risk. MQIO's unit price moves modestly with credit spread changes and interest rate movements — small in absolute terms but not zero. During credit stress events (like March 2020 or any future spread widening), MQIO can show short-term unit price drawdowns that pure deposit funds like AAA cannot. The closest pure-credit peers on the ASX are MMKT (Betashares' active cash-plus) and MONY (VanEck's cash-plus), but both run at materially lower fees (0.18% and 0.15%).

For investors comfortable with modest credit and duration risk in exchange for yield uplift over pure cash, MQIO is the largest and most established active credit ETF on the ASX. Our best cash ETFs guide compares MQIO's yield uplift against the pure-cash alternatives.