056 - Which Yield Max ETFs Are Worth It And How To Reduce The Risk When You Buy

A lot of people avoid high yield stocks like the plague, but they aren't all bad. 

Yield Max ETFs pay you crazy high dividends from the profits they make trading options on popular stocks. Some of these yield over 100%. 

Not all of their high earners are worth your dollars. We've been experimenting with these for over 9 months and have some top picks.

We've also come up with a strategy to reduce your risk. When used right, the extra money from these ETFs can help you buy a lot more shares of the good stuff. 

Top Yield Max ETFs

• NVDY
• AMZY
• NFLY
• FBY
• MSFO
• CONY
• GOOY
• JPMO
• XOMO

And if you want to reduce your risk even further YMAX is like an index of all of their available ETFs. (27 at the time of recording)

Just make sure you avoid TSLY and be skeptical of some of the others we talked about. They're not following the underlying stock they trade options on... which we find troubling. 

This is an update from Episode 26. 

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**DISCLAIMER**
Ticker metrics change as markets and companies change, so always do your own research. The content in this podcast is based on personal experience and is for educational purposes, not financial advice. See full disclaimer here.

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Transcript

Welcome to Roaming Returns, a podcast about generating a passive income through investing so that you don't have to wait to retirement to live your passions. Want to make money off growth companies without the fear of getting in too high? We've got a strategy for you. YieldMax ETFs pay you crazy high dividends from the profits they make trading options on popular stocks.
Some of these yield over 100%. Sounds too good to be true? It definitely can be if you pick the wrong ETFs, but we've figured out which ones are the best and how you can reduce your risk. Let's get rolling.
Peeps, peepettes, welcome to the hot, hot, hot, hot room. You always say that. Just stop saying that.
It's so hot and humid. It's like 80% humidity. It's disgusting.
Today, we're going to do  YieldMax. YieldMax, if you're not familiar, it's a way to make money off of individual stocks. What they do is they'll have a put, they'll have a call, and then they'll write a short call.
They basically are making it so it's like, from what I was reading, a synthetic owning of the stock. They actually don't own the individual stock, but between the put, the call, and the short call, it's the same as owning a stock. That's what they say anyways.
And it's perfect for our strategy because we don't really... We focus a lot more on monthly income versus the growth component. It makes Asia a ton of money. Yeah.
These are a really great supplement. I would not recommend having your entire portfolio in these because they do carry a level of risk with them. But if used properly, YieldMax can be an amazing way to generate extra income to then seed your bigger portfolio, your better portfolio assets, and grow that over time, and then generate that income.
It's kind of like getting a second job or hire... It's kind of like getting a job and then hiring somebody to do the work for you and just recouping the money. Yes. And they have some ridiculous rates, yield rates.
For example, if you like Tesla, you could be making 48% in Tesla per year. If you like Apple, you could be making 27% in Apple per year. If you're like me and you think NVIDIA is the bomb, you could be making 106% on NVIDIA for the year.
Amazon's 52%, Facebook's 42%, Google is 45%, Coinbase is 100%. So they have ridiculously high yield rates. But what I'm going to do today, it's going to be a two-part thing.
The first part is going to be, I'm just going to discuss the 10 that are doing the best for 2024 thus far. Yes, because they don't all perform exactly the same. And then once I go to the best, then I'll actually highlight how I actually trade these to minimize risks.
I think I've touched on it previously, but I'll redo it and hopefully do a better job because there was some confusion. Yes. So we'll redo the strategy or give you the full-blown strategy.
Okay. So as of June 28th, so I guess this was after the market closed on Friday, some website called EFTDB.com. I guess it's EFTdatabase.com. They actually have a list of all the yield maxes that are doing good. They don't have the YMAG one and the YMAX one and the ULTY one.
Those are different ones. YMAG is like a collection of the Magnificent 7. YMAX is a collection of all the ETFs that yield max offers. And the ULTY one is one I brought up previously.
They write options on smaller stocks, but they actually have pickers that actually go through and say, well, this looks like it has the volatility to be a good option for the month. And then they update it every month. I actually like ULTY.
It generates a lot of money, but it doesn't perform as well as the yield maxes. Can we touch on that right now? Because I think that's one of the things that either scares people away from the growth stocks or has people tweaking out when they're in growth stocks is the mass amount of volatility. And it's because when there's a lot of popularity and there's a lot of volume, people trading in and out, the price tends to move all over the place and move quickly.
Well, the volatility, like volatility generally is you kind of want to avoid that. Like we actually touched on the beta aeons ago. I forget what episode it was in, but like if you want consistent non-volatile stocks.
If you want a price that stays pretty much the same, you want a low beta. Yeah, but that's just like for stocks. Whenever you're trading an ETF that does like covered calls, the more volatility, the better, because that's when you get the bigger price jump and that actually actually generates more income.
So it's like completely different from your individual portfolio. In that regard, that's why I just do it through ETFs, because I don't want to do options. But like when a stock like Nvidia is going through 5, 10, 15 million shares, like trades a day, that's super good for an ETF that's making income off of selling options on Nvidia.
Yeah, so volatility is really good for options traders. If you're owning it yourself though, you probably would have a heart attack and then you'd have to deal with all those psychological triggers of, oh, do I need to sell? Because there's like 20 million people selling right now. So there's a huge difference between holding the stock and holding an ETF that has options on the stock.
Yes. I hope that makes sense. Hopefully, yeah.
You'll tell me. Okay. Top 10.
The first one is Nvidia. It's called- NVDY. NVDY.
It's not NVDA, it's NVDY. All the YieldMax ones have a Y at the end of them or- I think there's one that doesn't. A Y somewhere, like they have a Y. It's NVDY.
So far this year, it's up 94%, which is insanity. And this is June. 94% and it's actually yielding 106% yield.
So if you want upside, you have to pick your YieldMax's wisely. There are upside, like the 10 I'm going to give you have a decent amount of upside this year. But for these, they're generally used as an income vehicle.
They're not really upside capture thing like a capital appreciation. That's not what they're- Yes, exactly. These are not a long-term investment.
This is a way to actually get money coming in to put into the good investments or to get just a quick thing of cash. But basically, you don't invest in these with the mindset of them actually going up and up and up. In fact, a lot of them will go down or they'll mimic the actual stock that they're doing options on price-wise swings.
The second one is NFLY. It is YieldMax's Netflix one. It is currently up almost 30% year to date.
And I got to bear with me because there's two different charts here. So I have to flip back and forth. And it yields 43%.
So you see the first two, NVIDIA and Netflix, if you bought the individual stock, you're getting 0.5% yield. And maybe, I don't know, 100% for NVIDIA, but maybe 30% for Netflix. So the volatility is actually working in your benefit for the YieldMax Netflix one because it's actually up higher than the actual stock is with a 43% yield.
So the yield of these actually makes a bigger impact in your actual capital appreciation in your investment account than holding the actual growth stock and getting the growth going up. And again, that one's really dictated on if you get in at the right price. These kind of get rid of that problem.
The price for these all start at 20. When they launch, right? When they launch. So that was pretty easy.
When they first came out, I was like, I like that one. I like that one. I like that one.
And it was 20. So if it was under 20, that was a good deal. That's how I got NVIDIA at like, I don't know, 20.
I think NVIDIA, I got like $20 around there and it went up to like 36 before it pulled back. Amazon, I got like 18 and it went up. It's like 22 or 23 now.
So it was super helpful. When they first come out, they start at 20. So you pretty much know right away if they're undervalued compared to where they should be.
But the difference being like normal ETFs, they recalibrate based on the NAV every day. So you actually never get a discount to NAV. That's just one of the things that actual ETFs do.
They're not like closed-ended funds. Closed-ended funds run at a premium or a discount because they have a fixed number of shares. And that's all they do.
So if the NAV price for a closed-ended fund is $20 and the supply and demand is at 16, then it's going to be trading at a discount. Whereas ETFs, they kind of recalibrate that every day so it's never really at a discount. Well, you kind of have to look at a historical average of the NAV.
But the thing is, since a lot of these were fairly new and they don't have a ton of history, coming up with that actual par value of the NAV has been a little difficult, which is why we haven't really talked about these super, super in-depth up until this point. We needed a lot more data. Right.
The third one, like any of these top 10, you could feel comfortable getting into. I would wait for a pullback in some of them, but they've actually performed quite well. And I think the biggest knock on YieldMax is that you're going to lose your capital for a big dividend.
So this kind of debunks that whole shit talk about them. Amazon is up 28% so far in 2024, AMZY. We hold this one, like we hold an NVDY too, but AMZY is one that I've held from the very beginning.
As soon as it came out, I was like, the Amazon stock has performed super well. I don't like Amazon personally. I think it's the devil, but I'll make money off it.
I have no problem making money off it. AMZY, like I said, is up 28% and I do believe it's yielding 52%. And how they determine the yield is they take the current month's dividend and they multiply it by 12 and then they divide it into the NAV price.
So it's always fluctuating because the payouts aren't the same every month, they fluctuate. But currently at the current metrics, AMZY has a 52% yield. That's three.
Number four. Number four is the Facebook one, FBY. It's up 21% for the year and it is yielding 42.5% right now.
So you're starting to see the picture why these are so popular. These are companies that you never would make dividends on and you're making a shit ton of money, more than actual dividend aristocrats and achievers and all. You're making a lot of money.
That's why we actually have them in our money-making part of the portfolio, because they do generate a lot of income. And when we get through at the top 10, I'll explain to you how we've set it up so that we- Minimize risk. It's a specific strategy.
We use the money and we minimize risk, but I'll get to that here in a few minutes. Where are we at? Number five, I believe is the Microsoft one, MSFO. Again, this is another one we hold.
That's the one that doesn't have the Y. This one is currently up 18%. If you're a big fan of what AI is doing and the AI potential, you should have Microsoft stock. We have that through a couple of our funds, like JEPQ and NXBG.
This is just another way to make money off the AI thing, because JEPQ and NXBG also have Apple and they have NVIDIA. I understand we're tripling up on different companies, but I like what this one's actually performed quite well for us, MSFO. It is yielding 26%.
They're actually more conservative with the writing of the short calls on this one, but 26% is still a- Really good yield, yeah. You could do the yield chase. If you're not familiar with your yield chase, that's when people just type in high-yield investments and they just pick the highest ones.
You could do that with these and I- Don't recommend it. Don't recommend it, because Tesla, a couple of months ago, TSLY was yielding 100 and some percent and its price sucked. Its price is down 10% or 12%.
In theory, the dividends should cover the price loss. You actually might be up in TSLY if you've held it for five, six, seven months, but I actually don't like how it's ran. There's a couple on the list that are like that.
I don't like how they're ran, so I just stay away from them. That one's been run so bad that they actually had to do a reverse stock split to fix the price of that one. TSLY is one that we recommend staying away from.
Stay away from that one. We sold all of our shares in that because it didn't follow any strategy that made sense for us. The next one is Coinbase.
It's C-O-N-Y. It's the Coinbase Yield Max. It's up 18% year-to-date.
It was up 40%-ish before the last Bitcoin pullback, so this Coinbase one, for whatever reason, is tied to the price of Bitcoin. It's an ETF, so it shouldn't be tied to the price of Bitcoin, but it is, so what are you going to do? It's only up 17%, but it does yield 100%. So that's another one that you're still marginally up in, but you've made a shit ton in dividends every month.
These do pay out every month, which is super nice because you get some cash every month. Yep, we love that monthly. Cash every month.
Next one is GOOY, G-O-O-Y. It is the Google one. It's up 17% year-to-date.
GUI is yielding almost 45% for the year, or the yield is almost 45%, so that, again, I don't know if you've ever invested in Google. I think it's like 0.5% as a dividend, so it's pointless. That's why I actually like what they did here.
They just take the best stocks. They realize, hey, there's a lot of people that are looking for income out there that like these investments, so why not create investments where they can give us a lot of money, and we'll give them money back, and they're using all the most popular stocks, so that's super awesome. I absolutely love that they have these.
Really like those. Apple, I don't think, is actually performing too well this year. Is that one of your top 10? No.
The next one, I think number nine, is JPMO. It's the JP Morgan one. It's up 10% year-to-date, and it's yielding 21%, so good.
JP Morgan yields like 2%, so better than that. That's why these are the bottom ones. If you were just starting out, I would stick to the top five, but these all have been performing pretty well.
I believe that was either seven or eight or nine. I don't know. The next one is XOMO.
It's the Exxon Mobil one. It's up 9%, and what does Exxon Mobil yield? It yields 21% as well. Now, that one, what I actually did with that one, because we were in that one for a few months, and I noticed that it was okay, but I would actually ... That's the one, like one of the few that I actually prefer to own the actual stock, and we actually have Exxon Mobil in the retirement account, because it's raising its dividend every year, and it's much more consistent.
What is the dividend on the actual stock? Exxon Mobil is 3.5, so it's not near as much. But it's a dividend grower? Yeah. Okay.
That's one that I literally can just hold on to forever. Yeah, I would think if that one only has like a 20-some percent max yield, it probably does make more sense to own the actual stock to have the asset value in conjunction with the constant growing dividend. Well, like they have ... I think that was nine to ... I don't know.
They have MRNY, which is the Monero one. It's down 8%. They have the AIYY, which is the C3 AI stock.
It's down 20%. We had that one, didn't we? Yes, we did for a hot minute. The OARK, which is ... If you're familiar with Kathy Woods, she has the ARKK.
I don't know which one. I don't know what she's ... I don't like her, so I don't really follow her. That one's down 9%.
Tesla's down 7%. APLY is only up 6% for the year. So there's a lot of ... They have a good portion of them that are actually losing money for the year and their dividends are ... They are elevated, but it's not worth the price loss if you think about it with ... It's been a bull market run, so if it's down 17% or 10%, that's not a good sign.
So even if you're making 20%, your probability-wise, you're going to lose ... Your original investment. You're going to lose another 10% or 12% in the second half of 2024, so you're actually going to lose money with dividends reinvested in some of these. So that's why you have to be picky and choosy.
Now, the one that I really like is YMAX. They don't actually have the data for year to date, but I can tell you, because I just did the end of June numbers for our accounts in my little spreadsheet, YMAX is up 15% for the year. We are up 8% and YMAX is yielding ... It doesn't yield near as much as the other ones, but that's okay.
It's 45%, so it's still pretty good. But YMAX is the one that actually ... They take an equal share of all of their yield maxes. It's like an index fund.
Anytime they add a new one, they automatically reallocate so that they include the new one. So I like YMAX. I just recommend it to the YouTubers that I do their stuff for to get out of XYLD, which is the covered call for the S&P 500, and to put the proceeds into YMAX and into FEPI, which we covered it briefly before, which is the ones that actually hold the stock.
They don't write options on it. But YMAX, I like what they do. It's been pretty consistent.
It's between $18 and $22 all the time, but you're making 45%. So if it stays there, if it trades sideways, you're making 45%. Well, and that one makes so much sense, too, because it has less risk because it's got more actual things in the pot compared to the Exxon Mobil and some of those other ones that had lower yields.
Right, and if I like the company like Nvidia or Google or Facebook, it's okay that they're trading options on the one stock. If I don't like the company, say like AI or Apple, I don't want them to just be trading options on one particular company's stock. So I stay away from those.
I don't think Apple's going to be worth—I mean, everyone loves Apple, and I just don't like the stock. I could be wrong. Other people tell me, oh, Apple's the best stock ever.
Is that a personal bias, or is that actually tech-based? It's based on a bunch of data that I just don't like where they're—they keep spending money to get involved in other things, and their supply chains, they haven't figured like—rather than spend money on actually producing their chips in a country that they can get from the chips from the company. Oh, so you think their actual business system is faulty? It's flawed because they keep spending on AI and on tech updates, but they're not actually fixing the underlying problem. The hardware problem.
They have a hardware problem, and they're selling less in China, so their numbers are actually going to go down, and they're not actually trying to correct that right now. They're just trying to ride the AI wave. So I don't like Apple at all right now.
I mean, that's a personal preference right now. But just because we don't like something doesn't mean we won't invest in it if the numbers make sense, because we do that with other stuff. Yes.
Pfizer's one of the big ones. Well, the ones like—I can't stand Pfizer, but I have it in the retirement account because it's yielding 6%, and it's vastly undervalued. So I'll make money off it.
And their business model makes sense, so— Even if I don't like the company. I'm like, I'm not a tobacco user or any of that crap, but I don't have an issue investing in Moe. Yeah, we have Moe and BTI, and I think cigarette companies are like the devil because they literally just get you hooked on shit, and then— And CONY.
I hate Coinbase, but it makes sense to invest in it. So now, how do we trade these to minimize the risk? I get asked that— A lot. A lot from a lot of people because it sounds too good to be true.
And it does. Because we're trained to think anything over like a 6% yield, there's something wrong with the company. That's why the yield's so high, and there's countless examples where that's accurate.
Like look at Icon. Icon was trading at like 22%, and all hell broke loose. They had to cut the dividend and everything, and it's back up to 24%.
There's still a fundamental problem with the company. They haven't corrected it. So like sometimes that adage is correct.
Like if it has a high yield, there's a bad reason why it has a high yield. That means the share price is vastly lower than it should be, and the dividend yield is vastly higher than it should be. So that is accurate a lot of time, but people have been trained to believe that every time.
And like I mean, that's one of the things that we've been trying to educate people on for two years now. Like you can find high yielding investments that are good. Like JEPQ was yielding 12% whenever I said, hey, people probably should want to think about this one.
It's at 10% now, but like we've accumulated so much in price appreciation, like 40% in the price appreciation, plus we've accumulated so many dividends that I actually have sold the original amount that we invested in JEPQ, and we're still up 4,000. Like so you can make a shit ton of money with high yielders. It's just you have to do research.
You can't just say, well, pull up a list of everything that yields a lot, and then just like, well, that one, and that one, and that one. I can't even tell you how many social like people I've seen out there that literally just take the highest yields, and they do what Tim was talking about. They'll jump into them, and then they'll whatever they do with them, but that's risky.
Like that is a risky strategy. So what I did with the YieldMax is because once I like I saw them pretty much as soon as they came out. And piqued my interest because we understand options.
I didn't hear a lot of people talking about them, but now there's a lot more people are talking about them because they've been around for a few months. What I did is I said, OK, what companies are super popular that are going to have a lot of volume, which IE equals a lot of volatility, which is good for options, and which companies do I think are going to grow? So I picked Nvidia NVDY. Originally, I picked APLY, Apple.
And Tesla. And TSLY, and Amazon, and Microsoft. Those are like my original ones.
I had the original. What was my original? And keep in mind, they didn't have every one of the ones that are current available. When things first started, they keep adding to the list.
Yeah, I originally picked up Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia. So then I said, well, how can I make this so that it's not as risky as other high-yielding things that I've thought were OK that I got into and I lost a lot of money? So I just basically came up with an arbitrary number. In this case, it was $1,000.
I put $1,000 into Amazon, $1,000 into Microsoft, $1,000 into Nvidia, and $1,000 into Apple. And Tesla. And Tesla.
Then I kept track of it. So every time I got a dividend, I would use that. I didn't initially put the dividend drip on.
I just collected the dividends. So I was getting like, for example, Amazon was paying me about $40 a month. So we were taking that $40 a month as cash and investing it into good dividend stocks.
So yeah, I would put it into whatever, like Hercules Capital, Main Street Capital, whatever. Whatever I have that I wanted to get more shares on. This is how I originally started.
Then after a few months, I was able to determine, OK, the well-ran yield maxes are Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. So then I turned the drip on for Amazon and Microsoft. So I still have the drip on for those because they're well-ran.
And so every month, I'm getting more shares. For Apple, I saw that it was just whatever. Apple and Tesla both had the same problem where like, say, there was days when the share price of Apple would go up 5%, but the yield max would go down 3%.
I was like, well, that doesn't make sense. Like, who's writing these options? So I watched that for like a month, and I said, I'm out of this. I don't care.
So I took a, I believe it was like a $200 loss in Apple, the Apple yield max. Because it wasn't, well, $200 from the original purchase price. So a 20% loss.
So it was $800. But then I collected like, we'll say about $60 in dividends. So it was only like $140 loss.
But still, I took a loss in Apple. I took a huge loss in Tesla, TSLY. I took, it was probably $600 or $700 loss in Tesla.
But what I did is I just dumped that on the yield max. That way, I'm still getting exposure to the YMAX. When I'm still getting exposure to Apple, I'm still getting exposure to Tesla.
But it's performed better. So, basic strategy. Put whatever you're going to put into a yield max.
Leave the drip off. Once you get your original $1,000 or $500 or whatever you put into it. Like with NVIDIA, it took five months and I got my original $1,000 back.
So I sold $1,000 worth of the NBDY I had. I left everything else in there, and I turned the drip on. Because it's, and CONY did the same thing.
CONY spiked up a lot. So we actually were able to get our money back, I think, in three months on that one. Yeah, three months.
But that's kind of how I do it. It's kind of the similar strategy I have to all of the high yield cash generators. Like USLI and FEPI and QQQY and ULTY.
Like I put an original investment into it. And then I collect the dividend every month. And I subtract that from $1,000.
So currently, right now- We keep that data in a spreadsheet. Right now in Microsoft, I need another $500-ish in Microsoft. And then I can sell my original $1,000 and get my original $1,000 back.
So that I'm not out of any money. And then I can maintain my exposure to the MSFO with the remainder. It's not going to be generating as much cash, obviously, because you're taking $1,000 out of what you're using.
But it's cash that is, I mean, I hate to say it's free money, house money, whatever you want to call it, because that's like a bias that you shouldn't use. But it's like house money. That is how I minimize the risk.
I use the dividend to put it into better stocks. That way, I'm growing my better stocks every month with the dividends from the, quote, risky or bad, end quote, stocks. Yeah, the less high quality.
We would put the probably like the 60-70% quality range versus 100%. I'm hoping that makes sense. Like literally, you put $1,000 in, you collect the dividend.
And once you've collected $1,000 in dividends back, you're broke even. You can sell your original $1,000 and then whatever. Do you even need to sell your original $1,000 if you're taking in cash? You wouldn't even need to.
You wouldn't need to, no. You would literally just turn the drip back on at that point. And just you would have been collecting cash as opposed to drip reinvestment.
And at that point, whenever you hit that original investment recoup, then you just turn the drip back on in that yield max. And you just set it, forget it. Because there is a way to actually invest in yield maxes where it's not risky at all.
And then when you actually get that yield max up to whatever you want it to be paying out, you can turn the drip back off and literally just keep that cash as a paycheck. If you then have your rest of your portfolio set up. And that's actually what we're going to do when we get the proceeds from the condo.
When we sell the condo, I've already decided I'm going to put $6,000 into YMAX, ULTY, USLI, QQQY, and FEPI. And with those five companies with an additional 30,000, we'll be actually generating $1,800 a month in dividends. So we're getting $1,800 a month of paycheck from those five companies.
And I literally could give a shit what happens with those companies. If the share price is down, if the share price is up, it doesn't matter so long as the dividends remain somewhat consistent. We had quite a few long discussions on this.
And we were looking at it from the perspective of if we were taking money out of our account, our good investments, and we were spending that on living expenses, we wouldn't be getting any income back from that. But if we put it into YieldMax instead, and we take the money from YieldMax, even if after three years it goes to zero, you would have been break-even had you just spent the cash anyway. But like one of the reasons, one of the perks of YieldMax, I've watched it from the very beginning.
Like I'm actually one of the few. I know I mentioned that, but like I don't think people understand how important that is. I've actually watched it from inception to where we currently are.
And I've watched it go from like seven YieldMaxs to 27. And they keep like every month they add another one or another two a month. So like they're getting billions of dollars into these YieldMaxs and they keep growing.
So the odds of them going to zero within three to five years is like slim. It's very slim. So our whole point is if you had $30,000 that you set aside to go travel, like van life, whatever you want to do, a lot of people what they'll do is they'll work a whole bunch and they'll have their capital.
And then they just use that to pay for a living for say two to three years or six months or whatever it is. But if you invested that into YieldMax and you actually got that monthly income that you'd be using if you divided that $30,000 amongst that time period, you'd run out of money at your say three year mark. Whereas with YieldMax, you would indefinitely, potentially indefinitely keep getting that monthly income, regardless of the actual value of the money you originally invested, which is phenomenal. Yes, but I can't stress enough, don't just go yield hunting. They actually use some like fourth dimensional thinking, like what companies have a strategy, have strategy, like what are going to be volatile, like they're going to be popular enough to be volatile.
Like Exxon Mobil is probably one I wouldn't get, you're only getting 20% and it's not really that volatile because it's oil, most people just buy it and hold it. And because their actual stock, Exxon Mobil has probably a better setup for your good portfolio. Like that one in particular is the one that for the first one that comes to mind, Apple's probably another one, like most people don't really buy and sell Apple too frequently, like the volatility is not going to be there unless it has like a bad earnings or bad sales report.
Most people buy and hold Apple, so like that one's not going to be generating a lot of cash because there's not a lot of people selling. So like you have to use some fourth dimensional thinking, like these things have to be, there has to be volatility for YieldMax to actually be able to sell their short calls on these things. So if you look at all the ones performing like with a super high yield, you'll see that they are the most volatile ones, NVIDIA and Coinbase because they go through like people buy and sell millions of shares a day because they're just, I don't know, they day trade NVIDIA.
I don't know what they do, I don't know how. We don't know what other people are doing but apparently it is what it is and it's making the options really good. But I can tell you now we've had the NVIDIA one for 10 months, we've had the Amazon, Coinbase and Microsoft one for nine months and like they've been fairly consistent.
There's a band they trade within, you get a fairly consistent dividend each month. The problem with Tesla, the Tesla one is one month you get like $1.40 for a dividend and the next month you get like $0.50 for a dividend. That's like there's no consistency there.
So if you actually are using that as an income generator, it's very difficult. And the price is going down consistently, consistently, consistently. Very, very difficult.
Reverse stock split. What that means to me is like if you're in the van traveling or if you're not in a van traveling, hey, you're just traveling. Well, one month you can do whatever the hell you want because your dividend was $1.40 per share.
So yeah, that month you can do whatever you want. But the next month you're kind of stuck in a national forest or whatever because you're only getting like $0.40 per share. Getting like beans and rice.
That's not good when you're using it for income. But yeah, those have all been fairly good. And USOI, I know I don't actually mention that one enough, that one has been like the gold standard for high yield income investing.
And that's not a yield max but it follows a similar principle. They trade notes instead of the actual options. It's an ETN.
They trade on the USO. Like they write options on USO. And like that one has literally, we've had that for a year this time.
We had it for a year and a half previously. And it is really consistent with what they pay out. And that's an oil-based one.
So if you were thinking about Exxon Mobil, I would just invest in USOI because you're going to get a similar yield, 20%, 21%, 22%, but a more consistent payout. But the reason Exxon Mobil is at 20% is one month it paid. When the price of oil was like $80 some, the dividend for that month was like, I forget, it was like $0.55. And then another month when the price of oil went down to $60 some a barrel, it was like $0.19. Again, it doesn't seem like much, but if you're using this for income, that's a huge discrepancy.
And I'm assuming that one stays fairly flat price-wise. USOI has a really, the price fluctuates based on the price of oil. So it's anywhere between $67 and like $87 per share.
But the dividend has been fairly consistent. Okay. So that's cool.
Like it's between $0.50 and $0.70 usually, generally. But I like the ETN, though. Like SLVO has another ETN, but that one's, again, some months you're getting $1.19, and other months you're getting $0.20. So I didn't like that one for my income.
If I was just buying and holding, okay, SLVO would be one I may buy and hold. But what I'm using these for is to generate income that I can put into other investments. And I don't want to have $20 one month and $250 the next month.
Yeah. And then we're going to switch over to actually having them as our van monthly income. And we need that to be consistent, or we'd like that to be as consistent as possible.
So I hope you see how we're mitigating the risk is because we're just putting a block of money into these investments, and we're using that money to live off of. And meanwhile, we're putting the drip on all of our better investments. Any money we have left over from the income investments, we pour into all of our better investments.
So the better investments are going to keep compounding month after month after month after month because we're not touching them. And that's where you make the bigger gains for your future financial independence, is investing in the good stocks and letting that stuff compound. So I know we mentioned it previously with YieldMax.
It's literally just like a paycheck. So like if you can save your paychecks for a month or two and just dump it into YieldMax, it's like you're getting two paychecks. I mean, I actually think this would be a good method for your tax return because if you're just blowing it on like a discretionary, yay, celebration, whatever, if you'd invested in, say, YieldMax because you'd be basically spending that money anyway, but if you actually put it into something that can generate you potential passive income for life... Well, I'm saying if you get $5,000 back in your tax return and you dump it all into, say, Nvidia or Coinbase, which is generating 100%, 110%, you're actually going to be making $500.
So you have a $5,500 quote tax refund at the end of the year. So like it is a way to actually make a shit ton of money. Yeah.
Like a shit ton. Like I don't know. Again, I'm flabbergasted why they're not discussed more.
I think because people like... I think a lot of people got burned with Tesla. I think it's the fear of the high yield and the high yield is... And then I think because a lot of people got burned with Tesla. So they were like, oh, it proved me right.
I'm not going to touch these anymore. I'm scared, whatever, whatever. But if you have a strategy with it and you do something along the lines of what we're talking about, like you're going to come out so much further.
But I mean, if you've actually traded these and you have a strategy that differs, like do let us know. Shoot us a note saying, here's what my strategy is. This is how I mitigate the risk in these.
I'm always up for learning new things and maybe implementing new things. But what I've currently settled on is what I currently have. And if someone gives me a better idea, I'll steal it and give them credit.
By all means, collaborate. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Hopefully this gave you some ideas.
We actually had to download the OBS. So we're actually going to have some kick-ass episodes coming up with regards to... I'm literally going to find five stocks that are going to go ex-dividend. And I'm actually going to go through exactly what I look for each week that I do that.
I'll show you the points I look for. I mean, I guess I can circle them. It's very exciting news.
Yeah, I got a screenwriter thing. I can circle them. I can point out exactly what to look for.
I mean, when the episode actually airs. It is in Schwab. So if you have fidelity, there might be different places to look for the same information.
But I'll show you the information that I actually look for. It's going to be a very educational quick crash course on how to evaluate dividend stocks. You'll get to see exactly what Tim does real time.
And it seems to be working because last month the market was down almost 2%. And the retirement account was up half a percent. And the van portfolio was down a couple hundred dollars is all.
And the YouTubers, they were up like 4%. So like it actually is whatever I'm doing is working. Yeah.
It just takes time in the beginning to get your shares where you need them to be. And then once you hit a certain point, like you really start seeing the results. Yeah, the YouTubers, they generated $1,600 last month.
Her mom's retirement generated $1,600 and we generated $1,700. Yep, yep. So you're making a shit ton of money.
Plus you're getting price appreciation because you're getting everything undervalued using the things I'll circle and highlight. So it'll be it'll be awesome. I'm super excited for you guys to learn it.
So if you guys want any specific stocks evaluated, like send us a note, drop a note. There's a contact thing. Just shoot us a thing somewhere.
And that's not a fart. That's my exercise ball. We'll do them live on air for you.
All right, guys. Hopefully that helped you and gave you some ideas. Any questions, shoot us a comment.
Like shoot them to us. I'll answer them. Like I understand it's nerve wracking.
It could be because it is going against the norm. All right. See you next week, guys. Thanks for being here.