Have the YieldMax ETFs worked for investors, though? It’s questionable at best.
Poor Dollar-Weighted Returns
Assuming shareholders reinvested 80% of the distributions they received, I estimate the average dollar invested in YieldMax ETFs would have lost 11.2% per year from Dec. 1, 2022, through July 31, 2025. Over the trailing one and two years ended July 31, 2025, I estimate the YieldMax ETFs earned dollar-weighted returns of 14.2% and 6.4% per year, respectively.
(These estimates can vary depending on the reinvestment rate assumed. For conservatism, I assumed 80% because it resulted in higher dollar-weighted return estimates, while acknowledging that at least some YieldMax investors are not reinvesting all of the distributions they receive. However, given this potential variation, I’ve shown the range of estimated dollar-weighted returns at various reinvestment rates in an Appendix. A YieldMax representative was not able to provide data on reinvestment rates.)
While these estimated dollar-weighted returns might look respectable in absolute terms, at least over the trailing one and two years ended July 31, 2025, they were typically far lower than the ETFs’ total returns, to say nothing of the returns of the single stocks or other ETFs those YieldMax ETFs reference.
For instance, over the trailing year ended July 31, 2025, I estimate the average dollar invested in YieldMax ETFs gained 14.2%, which would be less than half the buy-and-hold return of the ETFs themselves (30.3%) and only about a quarter of the underlying stocks’ total return over this period (53.9%).
Source:
https://www.morningstar.com/funds/an-etf-gained-almost-42-year-its-investors-still-lost-money
Liên Minh Bảo Hiến Mỹ Gốc Việt
Vietnamese American Conservative Alliance (VACA)
https://freedom-vaca.org/vaca-blog-tieng-viet-nam/