Over the year to September 30, 2026, 51 of 175 index income ETFs finished ahead of the benchmark index they write options against, once every cash payment was counted and reinvested. The median fund fell short by 3.1 percentage points. The gap was not evenly spread across issuers. Global X, State Street, NEOS, Overlay Shares and iShares each had a majority of their full-year funds beat their benchmark, with median gaps ranging from +0.4 to +2.2 points. At the other end, Innovator's 14 full-year funds produced zero winners against benchmark, with a median gap of −10.1 points, and GraniteShares, at a median gap of −12.6 points, and Westwood, at −20.9 points, showed some of the widest shortfalls in the table, though each is based on only two funds with a full year of data.
Distribution rate tracked closely with how a fund did against its benchmark. Funds paying under 8% a year had a median price change of +0.0% and a median total return of +6.6%, still finishing a median 4.4 points behind benchmark. Funds paying 8% to 15% did better, with a median gap of −2.9 points. Once rates climbed past 15%, the picture turned harder: the 15%-to-30% group had a median price change of −20.7%, the 30%-to-60% group −41.1%, and the 60%-and-above group −66.8%, with a median total return of −28.2% and a median gap of −8.4 points against benchmark. Put plainly, the data shows that a payout above thirty percent a year has mostly been paid out of the price, not thrown off by the index itself.
That pattern shows up again in issuer-level numbers. YieldMax funds, with a median cash paid of 35.0% and a median price change of −26.3%, still returned +5.8% as a group, but fell 7.3 points behind their benchmarks. Roundhill and Defiance, both with high median cash-paid numbers above 28%, posted price falls of −22.8% and −15.3% respectively.
Rule 19a-1 notices, which issuers file to estimate the tax character of a distribution, point to where some of that cash is coming from. Across 61 YieldMax funds with notices, the median fund's latest distribution was 89% return of capital, meaning most of the payment was a return of the investor's own money rather than income or gains, and 30 of those 61 funds were estimated at 90% or more. GraniteShares showed a median return of capital of 95% across 40 funds, with 28 at 90% or above, alongside a median one-year price change of −67.8%. Global X and NEOS, by contrast, carried median return-of-capital estimates of 99% and 93% respectively but had milder price moves, +2.3% and −2.5%, a reminder that a high return-of-capital estimate does not by itself say how a fund's price behaved.
Readers working the live desk can check any individual fund's trailing distribution rate, its 19a-1 return-of-capital estimate, and its one-year price change and total return against the benchmark it tracks, to see where it sits against these issuer and distribution-rate medians.