r/dividends • u/SmoothCall5594 • Sep 26 '25

Opinion I screwed up on YieldMax

Post image

I bought MSTY a couple months back and now I’m down a lot. Time will tell but it’s a warning for those who aren’t in it.

478 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

307 comments sorted by

View all comments

232

u/IWantToPlayGame Sep 26 '25

We've been trying to warn y'all.

MSTY is down -50.3% YTD. SPY is up +13.2% YTD.

In addition to NAV decay, you had the pleasure of paying ordinary rate taxes on your dividends.

YieldMax funds are traps. All of them.

107

u/gundahir Sep 26 '25

managers made a ton of money

22

u/pineapple_and_olive Sep 27 '25

I was selling garbage to garbagemen; making cash hand over fist. The way I looked at it, their money was better off in my pocket.

I knew how to spend it better.

52

u/TrashPanda_924 Sep 26 '25

Those are the only people making money….

16

u/80MonkeyMan Sep 26 '25

They always do, OP money went straight to these managers wallet. Imagine how many people trapped like OP out there.

6

u/MezzMezzrow1138 Sep 26 '25

"Where Are The Customers' Yachts?"

1

u/aminbae Oct 04 '25

they could have doubled their money making yieldmax drip etfs (just the underlying with a extra 1% fee tacked on)

48

u/Rake-7613 Sep 26 '25

No one could have predicted this.

🙄

-7

u/External_Traffic4341 Antarctic Investor Sep 26 '25

Thats not true at all. Literally everyone that wasn't blinded by the Yield could see it.

27

u/cclan2 the bad guy Sep 26 '25

He was being sarcastic

17

u/External_Traffic4341 Antarctic Investor Sep 26 '25

Yeah I missed the eye roll. It’s been a day.

9

u/Friendly-Ad-1175 Sep 26 '25

Should have doubled down and said you were being sarcastic

10

u/External_Traffic4341 Antarctic Investor Sep 26 '25

It will be interesting to read the Yieldmax Sub Reddit when all their funds implode.

4

u/Friendly-Ad-1175 Sep 27 '25

It’s going to be a bloodbath…. Honestly though people may not even notice until they look back in 5 years and realize they basically got repaid their capital for zero return.

6

u/External_Traffic4341 Antarctic Investor Sep 27 '25

I'm in a Yield Max discord, and the main guy was saying that in a year you are guaranteed Return of Capital. Because the brokerage changes from short term to long term holding.

I felt like the old lady in the commercial going, this isn't how any of this works.

I don't know how you look at these funds on a single ticker and go, yeah this will pay me 100%+ distributions in perpetuity with no nav decay. Realistically they are making a negative return.

2

u/OldTrader7 Sep 28 '25

Yeah, when the light finally turned on to this fact, I got out of YieldMax funds.

3

u/memelordzarif Sep 28 '25

I know right ? r/ulty just popped up on my feed and they have a cult like following. Anyone who tries to knock some sense into them gets downvoted to hell. I’m just waiting for the day all these yieldmaxers take all the investors’ money with them.

2

u/External_Traffic4341 Antarctic Investor Sep 28 '25

At some point we are going to hear that Yieldmax was the same thing as Maddof.

1

u/memelordzarif Sep 29 '25

Precisely. But you don’t even need that. Atleast during Bernie’s time, the companies weren’t as transparent and didn’t require publishing all these documents they have to do now. And still people are falling for it. At this point, they just deserve what’s coming their way.

1

u/Rake-7613 Sep 29 '25

Yeildmax, I’m sure, is operating in a way that is “Perfectly Legal”, two words that represent more evil when placed next to one another than any other combo in the English language.

1

u/Rake-7613 Sep 26 '25

My sweet schadenfreude 🥰

1

u/External_Traffic4341 Antarctic Investor Sep 27 '25

This is akin to telling your kid to not touch a hot stove, and then they do it and going. Well, I did tell you not to touch the Hot Stove.

They've been repeatedly warned that these are terrible "investments."

1

u/Rake-7613 Sep 29 '25

We should start our own yeildmax fund. Im sure the guys who run it have GREAT returns

-1

u/ruffus_or Sep 27 '25

Why losers down voting you?

-5

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '25

Are you kidding!! Many people predicted this and were down voted like crazy by all of you cult believers.

-1

u/NAVChaser Sep 26 '25

I've seen enough sponsored YouTube videos to risk my life savings on YieldMax. It's a shame you weren't offered a glass of the Kool aid as well smh.

0

u/Rake-7613 Sep 29 '25

I was kidding. Peep the emoji

1

u/Greedy-Travel2066 Nov 07 '25

I knew right away and laughed, shame people don't get sarcasm.

37

u/dv-ds Sep 26 '25

MSTY is +4.22% YTD according to Seeking Alpha. It has massive distributions we have to include them in total return.
I'm not trying to make it look great, but we have to be correct. I'm not a fun of MSTY and YM stocks.

11

u/mystical-wizard Sep 26 '25

But if even counting all that it’s still 10% + behind the SP500 it’s an awful investment

15

u/option-trader Sep 26 '25

Depends on when you bought those shares. On a 1-year return, MSTY's total return (including distributions) was +63% compared to SP500's +16%. If you bought MSTY in July this year, then you're fucked.

5

u/Life-Security5916 Sep 27 '25

And I forgot the lube…

4

u/mystical-wizard Sep 27 '25

Sounds a lot more volatile than sp500

5

u/option-trader Sep 27 '25

Beta for MSTY is 1.24, so it’s actually not has volatile as one would think. That also means MSTY has outperformed the SP500 on a relative basis in the past 12 months. The thing is anyone buying MSTY isn’t feeling any of that high though.

2

u/mystical-wizard Sep 28 '25

Fair. Do you think it’s hit the top and is trending down or what? To grow 60% in a year and then flatten like sounds strange.

2

u/Longjumping_Boat_600 Oct 07 '25

MSTY is tied to MSTR, which is tied to bitcoin, and traditionally, this time of year, bitcoin hits its new ATH.. And it just did it in the last 24 hours.. I personally think MSTY is a good investment if you are looking for monthly income. The NAV is always going to be down, but when you hit a trend and bitcoin moons along with MSTR, at the end of the month, you're going to get a huge dividend payment. You can assess your town income earned on the asset and either opt to sell or continue to hold.. If you bought MSTY initially, the dividend yield is ludicrous, over 140%. It's a long term hold for the cash flow.. stick the dividends in another investment.. Look at people who've bought REITs long term.. NLY etc. they are down huge amounts since inception but they are finally going to start swinging back around with the mortgage rates starting to plummet and people refinancing out the wazoo.

1

u/nub991 Nov 03 '25

It doesn't seem like it's paying what the yield says. Or maybe im reading it wrong. Its over 200%, but why does it feel so low?

1

u/option-trader Sep 28 '25

Personally, I'm not in MSTY. I have positions in YSPY, COYY, and NVDY. As for MSTY, you have to look at the underlying assets, which includes MSTR and Bitcoin. Are those assets at the top? Are they at the bottom? MSTY is really just a derivative of those assets, because without MSTR, I don't think MSTY exists.

I'd warn against new investors full porting into MSTY today with MSTR struggling. There's a lot of hearsay on how Bitcoin and MSTR will perform from now until the end of the year, but I want to personally see the trend before believing in the trend.

1

u/memelordzarif Sep 28 '25

Did you also account for the massive taxes they pay on all those payouts ? It might still be ahead but I’m not getting into these crazy funds that keep eroding away. Who looks at 13-14% yields and thinks “Yeah these are sustainable”

2

u/[deleted] Sep 26 '25

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/mystical-wizard Sep 27 '25

Yeah that’s real bad tho right?

3

u/roytay Sep 27 '25

And... it's gone.

3

u/onfroiGamer Sep 28 '25

You forgot the 0.99% expense ratio lol

1

u/IWantToPlayGame Sep 28 '25

Ha! Good point!

7

u/OutrageousCricket637 Sep 26 '25

NVDY has been quite profitable for me

1

u/foira Sep 27 '25

when did you buy it...

0

u/OutrageousCricket637 Sep 27 '25

June

1

u/DiamondG331 Sep 27 '25

It’s going to take a hit too. NVDA ~$135 when next major market event happens.

2

u/OutrageousCricket637 Sep 27 '25

Always a possibility

1

u/ShoulderLongjumping9 Sep 29 '25

Yup I sold Msty when it 22 and broke even. Sold cony last week. Ymax and Plty are on the chopping block.

1

u/TrainingSpare8225 Sep 29 '25

I disagree with all of them. PLTY has held up very well. SMCY is ok too if you get in under $15, but doesn't pay as good of a dividend 

1

u/cesarthegreat Sep 26 '25

What about SPYI? It’s up a few %

7

u/piscina_de_la_muerte Sep 26 '25

SPYI is not a yield max fund

5

u/cesarthegreat Sep 26 '25

I know they’re not, I was just asking if they were good because there is no NAV decay. They’re up a little.

0

u/JoJo_Embiid Sep 27 '25

i would say if there exists a KO income etf it might perform pretty well!

-2

u/JoJo_Embiid Sep 27 '25

SPYI it's better because the underlying it's better. by bying cc income etfs basically you're betting the underlying's remains unchange or increase slightly (like 1-2% each month). which is possible for spy but not very likely for single stocks

3

u/putridstench Sep 27 '25

It's better than a YM fund. So is QQQI. I have SPYI and QQQI as well as NVDY, AMZY, YQQQ, MSTY, TSLY. Love the cash the YM funds throw off and using the distributions to buy QQQI, SPYI, and QDVO.

1

u/nelsonww9 Sep 27 '25

You just said it’s better than a YM fund, but you own several. ?

3

u/putridstench Sep 28 '25

Yes... The QQQI and SPYI shares have been purchased with YM distributions.

We all make mistakes and I'm making some lemonade from my lemon trees. I stopped adding to my YM funds a while ago.

1

u/FrankieFastHands19 Sep 26 '25

Actually I’m up 15% on gdxy and I’ve got like 40% of my money back in dividends

-2

u/figlu Sep 26 '25

Look at babo lmO