Monthly dividend ETFs: 15 income funds measured against their index

How to read this list

Every fund here pays monthly or weekly, and almost all of them earn that income by selling call options. The yield is what gets them on lists like this one, but the yield is partly your own money coming back. The column that matters is total return with every payout reinvested, against simply holding what the fund tracks over exactly the same days.

Each line below gives the fund's total return a year, the same for its index or stock, and the last twelve months of payouts as a share of today's price. Windows start at each fund's first close, so funds with different launch dates cover different years.

Nasdaq-100 income funds

GPIQ (from October 2023): +22.5% a year against QQQ +25.2%; payout about 11%. Kept about 90% of QQQ's return while its share price rose.

QDTE (from March 2024): +16.5% against QQQ +17.2%; payout about 46%, while its share price fell about 43%.

QQQI (from January 2024): +16.2% against QQQ +19.0%; payout about 15%.

JEPQ (from May 2022): +14.0% against QQQ +18.1%; payout about 11%.

QYLD (from 2016): +9.1% against QQQ +19.3%; payout about 12%. The ten-year record of selling at-the-money calls every month.

S&P 500 and Russell 2000 income funds

SPYI (from August 2022): +14.2% a year against SPY +18.0%; payout about 12%.

IWMI (from June 2024): +14.2% against IWM +15.4%; payout about 15%.

JEPI (from May 2020): +11.5% against SPY +17.2%; payout about 8%. Fell far less in 2022: -3.5% against SPY -18.2%.

XYLD (from 2016): +8.4% against SPY +14.9%; payout about 10%.

Single-stock and bitcoin income funds

NVDY (from May 2023): +41.2% a year against NVDA +63.4%; payout about 66%.

TSLY (from November 2022): +9.0% against TSLA +20.7%; payout about 75%; share price down about 90%.

MSTY (from February 2024): +8.7% against MSTR +16.9%; payout about 160%; share price down about 90%.

YMAX (from January 2024): +10.0% against QQQ +20.1%; payout about 62%.

CONY (from August 2023): +0.9% against COIN +15.4%; payout about 140%.

BTCI (from October 2024): -0.6% against IBIT +0.9%; payout about 35%.

What the list shows

No fund on the list beat what it tracks over its whole history. The newer index funds (GPIQ, QDTE, QQQI, JEPQ, SPYI, IWMI) kept about 75% to 95% of their index's return; JEPI kept about two thirds, and the older at-the-money writers QYLD and XYLD about half. The single-stock funds kept about half or less, because on a very volatile stock the calls give away big rallies and the payouts leave nothing to recover the price after a fall. The higher the yield, the larger the share of it that came out of the share price.

Where the funds earned their keep was in a single sharp drop: in the February to April 2025 sell-off nearly every one fell a few points less than its index. Over full cycles the capped rallies cost more than that. The covered call ETFs vs selling puts guide explains the trade underneath all of them, and the premium collected guide why a payout is not a profit.

How we measured

Daily closing prices from Yahoo Finance, split adjusted. Total return reinvests each distribution on its ex-date. Each fund is compared with what it tracks on exactly the same days, from the fund's first close. No taxes or trading costs are included, and past returns do not predict future ones. This is a measurement, not advice for anyone's account. The Nasdaq, S&P and QYLD figures are through the November 11, 2026 close; the single-stock, bitcoin, QDTE, IWMI and GPIQ figures are through midday November 13, 2026. Payouts are the trailing twelve months divided by the latest price.