r/YieldMaxETFs

There is a dangerous fallacy routinely perpetuated in this sub: the belief that as long as an income ETF throws off massive distributions, it’s worth holding onto even when the underlying asset is in a downward spiral that drags the fund's total return into the negative. The fatal mistake is doubling down on this logic, believing that merely diverting those distributions into "safer" ETFs justifies holding onto a fundamentally wasting asset - Even if you believe in the "house money" nonsense.

To test the math on this, I ran a 1-year performance breakdown pitting MSTY against CHPY from May 2025 to May 2026.

Over the last 12 months, MSTY dove, delivering a dismal -48% total return. Meanwhile, CHPY capitalized on a massive semiconductor bull run, delivering a +117% total return.

This real-world case study exposes the math of what happens when you stubbornly DRIP into a declining asset versus sweeping that capital into vehicles with actual positive total returns. Here is how four different strategies played out across two segregated $10,000 accounts.

FYI, I have owned CHPY since April of 2025 and don't DRIP, instead diversifying the cash flow.

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Imagine that 1 year ago you had 2 accounts: account A held $10,000 worth of MSTY and account B held $10,000 worth of CHPY. It doesn't matter how you got to that point...but there you were.

For both independent accounts, the cash distributions generated by the core positions were handled in four distinct ways to measure their impact on net liquidation value today:

1. Strategy 1 (Pure DRIP): 100% of the cash distributions were automatically reinvested right back into the originating ETF, compounding the share count at prevailing market prices.
2. Strategy 2 (Hold Cash): The cash distributions were extracted from the asset but left entirely idle, sitting on the sidelines of the account as uninvested cash.
3. Strategy 3 (Sweep into SPY): The cash distributions were immediately diverted away from the core asset and used to dollar-cost-average (DCA) into SPY shares or fractional shares, capturing a rolling average of the broader market’s positive momentum.
4. Strategy 4 (Sweep into JEPQ): The cash distributions were immediately diverted to purchase shares of JEPQ, building a secondary, positive total return income stream.

Mathematical Modeling for the Sweeps

For the diversion strategies (SPY and JEPQ), the math assumes a consistent, rolling inflow of distribution cash rather than a lump sum. To simulate realistic dollar-cost-averaging over the course of the year, the swept cash was calculated using a rolling entry point (applying an average rolling return of roughly 15% for SPY and 13% for JEPQ on the transferred batches of cash).

Here is where you stand today:

Strategy	Account A: MSTY Only	Account B: CHPY Only
1. Pure DRIP	$5,180	$21,760
2. Hold Cash	$8,800	$21,700
3. Into SPY	$9,775	$22,750
4. Into JEPQ	$9,645	$22,610

One year ago each account was worth $10,000.

Dump those losers (negative total return ETFs) and reallocate your capital to winners. Even if you simply sold all that MSTY last year and bought $10,000 worth of SPY, account A would be worth ~$12,680 today. Whatever you decide, DO NOT DRIP INTO A DECLINING TOTAL RETURN ETF!

With 30-year mortgage rates recently hitting 6.75% and still under upward pressure from higher Treasury yields, I’ve been looking at a mixed strategy on TLT.

For the short term, you can either buy near-term put options on TLT or trade TMV, the 3x inverse long-term Treasury ETF. Both can profit if TLT drops as rates stay elevated or rise further. For the longer term, buy call options on TLT with 6-12 month expirations to position for when rates eventually stabilize or decline and TLT recovers.

This approach lets you play the near-term bearish pressure on TLT while keeping upside exposure for a potential improvement in the rate environment later. It’s a debit strategy with upfront cost and time decay risk on the short-term side. If TLT stays flat, you can lose on both legs.

April 2026 marked my 17th month in YieldMax ETF's.

As always, I like to share my monthly progress so others can learn from my mistakes and hopefully get more transparency into how these work. I've been experimenting to see how viable it is to grow these funds by re-investing the distributions. (Yes, growth stocks are better suited for this.)

April Thoughts

While I'm still down overall, April gave me a much needed boost. Ever since September, my total return has been decreasing every month. In September my total return was at 9.27%. At the beginning of April, my total return was at -18.61%

I felt like my portfolio finally gave a strong performance this month

• NAV was relatively stable for the first time in a long time. In the previous months, I had NAV landslide instead of NAV erosion.
• GOOY had a great run in April, experiencing a decent price gain
• I am hopeful that SNOY has also bottomed out and actually see this as a great buying opportunity

March Positions

In the beginning of April I invested $364.20, consisting of:

• $255.64 in Cash using my 2% income allowance
• $108.56 from previous distributions

Using this money I expanded the following positions::

• 10 shares of BABO
• 10 shares of XOMO
• 10 shares of GOOY

Wife's Disapproval Update

• I haven't boasted about my YieldMax portfolio for awhile. That's probably not going to change until I'm back in the positive. So, maybe next year 😂

April Portfolio Breakdown

Current Positions

Stock	QTY	Avg. Price Bought	Price (4/30)	Price Gain	Monthly Distributions	All-Time Distributions	Total Return
YMAG	37	$15.13	$12.80	🔻-15.4%	$17.37	$145.36	⬆ 10.57%
YMAX	37	$12.10	$8.41	🔻-30.5%	$17.36	$144.28	⬆ 1.73%
ULTY	7	$53.98	$31.39	🔻-41.85%	$14.20	$187.80	⬆ 7.85%
AIYY	5	$39.25	$9.55	🔻-75.67%	$2.52	$67.34	🔻-41.35%
SNOY	34	$15.88	$6.81	🔻-57.12%	$11.46	$212.82	🔻-17.7%
NVDY	35	$15.51	$13.46	🔻-13.22%	$16.87	$163.72	⬆ 16.94%
GDXY	30	$15.65	$12.82	🔻-18.08%	$19.73	$52.20	🔻-6.96%
XOMO	28 (⬆10)	$13.04	$12.25	🔻-6.06%	$10.25	$17.59	🔻-1.24%
GOOY	28 (⬆10)	$13.44	$15.45	⬆ 14.96%	$10.58	$18.05	⬆ 19.75%
BABO	20 (⬆10)	$11.50	$10.26	🔻-10.78%	$7.04	$11.62	🔻-5.73%
					$127.39

Grand Totals

All-Time Totals
Total Cash Invested	$3,738.00
Total Dividends Earned	$1,576.11
Total Dividends Re-invested	$1,451.14
Total Portfolio Value (3/31)	$3,261.46
Total Return	🔻-12.75%

Abandoned Positions

I'm using this to answer the question, "Should I have sold MSTY and CONY?". I exited my positions in February after significant NAV erosion. I plan on updating this each month to see what my returns would look like had I held.

These were my returns when I exited my positions

Stock	Shares	Exit Date	Avg. Cost	Exit Price	Price Gain	Total Distributions	Total Return
MSTY	10	2/24/26	$100.08	$22.20	🔻-77.82%	$399.64	🔻-37.89%
CONY	5	2/24/26	$84.99	$25.57	🔻-69.91%	$155.70	🔻-33.27%

And these are the returns returns had I continued holding

STOCK	Price (4/30)	Price Gain	Distributions Since Exit	Total Return Had I Not Sold
MSTY	$24.73	🔻-75.29%	$32.63	🔻-32.10%
CONY	$26.19	🔻-69.18%	$19.61	🔻-27.92%

Monthly Distributions Over Time

Great see to see a strong month again!

Total Portfolio Value Over Time

GOOY really helped my portfolio grow this month

Total Return Over Time

https://preview.redd.it/0r65rsr2a32h1.png?width=1496&format=png&auto=webp&s=e14d3a117c2d1e810e87dc8d048a6d7acf00f68a

Total Yield Over Time

I wanted to start visualizing my distributions as a percentage of my overall portfolio value

https://preview.redd.it/dzsby7t4a32h1.png?width=1490&format=png&auto=webp&s=8ec0952163e6ebb7aebfd8f84bff72af4bee1dcf

This will be amazing for people that need income and don't want to wait. Im going to tip my toe in and see how it goes. 30k will pay 10.68 per day. Any thoughts?

https://preview.redd.it/s02lyr6jei1h1.png?width=1238&format=png&auto=webp&s=6805cbe9522e548f2153eaea386f4d1cdd56aa2a

I updated my YieldMax ETF tracking sheet for April and changed the layout a bit based on feedback from the last post.

The main change: I’m trying to make it easier to compare these funds beyond just the headline payout rate.

This version tracks:

• Dividend TTM
• Price growth / decline
• Total return -- for this month, for example, April 1th ~ April 30th
• Payout support risk
• Stability
• Prior month comparison

A few things stood out to me this month:

Most of the YieldMax names still show very high Dividend TTM numbers, but a lot of them also have negative price growth and elevated payout support risk.

For example, MSTY still has a very high Dividend TTM, but also shows large negative price growth. CONY, ULTY, TSLY, YMAX, and several others show a similar pattern.

On the other side, CHPY looks different from many of the others in this snapshot: lower Dividend TTM than the highest-yielding names, but much stronger price growth.

RNTY is also interesting because it has a much lower Dividend TTM and does not show the same elevated payout support risk flag.

This is not meant to be a buy/sell recommendation. I’m mostly trying to build a cleaner way to compare these funds side by side instead of only looking at the current monthly distribution rate.

Still a work in progress, and some tickers may have incomplete data.

Curious how others evaluate these funds:

Do you mostly care about current payout rate, NAV/price trend, total return, return of capital, or something else?

you can find March analysis result from previous post https://www.reddit.com/r/YieldMaxETFs/comments/1sqnsfm/sharing_my_march_2026_yieldmax_etfs_report/

Yesterday’s YMAG and YMAX Div payouts were incorrect for my Roth. Anyone have issues with this before?

Hi All,

Where to start on an income ETF? I bought some TSLY and days of reading later am more confused than ever. Are any yieldmax ETFs in a good place to buy? Meaning not at peak but good income?

Just wondering….

What do you like better and why?

As someone who bought msty and cony in December 2024 I ended up selling at a loss even though I received quite a bit in distribution. NAV decline was very high.

I'm curious if anyone sold and has recently bought back? If so, why?

Hey just as it sounds, i noticed a sudden increase in the cash balance in my brokerage and was wondering what happened, and then found out it was because i had multi msty payouts in a single day 05/07, it came to about 280dollars over 22 payouts ranging from 2.55-30.22. Just wondering is this like a mid year thing? i know some stocks/etfs give out special dividends but this just seems weird, anyone else got the same thing?

for context i also own some tsly but i only got 1 payout from them so i dont think its an account problem?

Hey all, I built a small YieldMax tracker for my own spreadsheet workflow and decided to share it in case it helps others. It’s free to use.

I mainly use it for ex/pay date tracking, cash-flow by period, ROC/tax estimates, and reverse-split adjustments.

No links here — you can find it by searching “MintTap” on the App Store or Google Play.

If this belongs in the weekly thread, I’m happy to move it.