What option-income ETFs paid and made, 2026-Q2

The problem

A fund advertises a yield and you read it as a return. Those are different numbers and over a quarter they can point in opposite directions. The distribution is a payment the fund decides to make, on a schedule, out of option premium and out of whatever else it takes. What you made is what happened to your money: the price of the fund plus everything it paid you. A fund can pay you handsomely in a quarter you lost money in, and it did not do anything wrong when it did.

The second thing nobody publishes is what the fund would have made if it had simply held what it writes on. Selling the upside is the trade. It has a price, the price is paid in the quarters when the market rises, and until it is measured against the fund's benchmark there is no way to see what it cost.

What happened in the second quarter of 2026

The median fund paid out 4.66 percent of its own price and returned +6.55 percent in total over the same days. So the median fund made more than it paid, which is the arrangement working. 116 of the 275 did not: they paid out more cash than they made in total return, and the median fund on that measure was 1.62 points clear of its own distribution.

Against their benchmark, 192 of the 275 finished behind and 83 finished ahead, by a median of 3.21 percentage points. Read that as the price of the trade rather than as a scoreboard, for the reason in the next section.

Why the gap is there, and why it is not a ranking

A covered call fund gives up the part of a rise above its strike in exchange for the premium it was paid for that right. So the gap to its benchmark is small when the underlying went nowhere and large when it ran, and the funds furthest behind in any quarter are the funds whose underlying rose most. Sorting on it produces a league table of which underlyings went up, wearing the funds’ names.

The split by what a fund writes on says something a median on its own hides, and it is the opposite of what it looks like at first glance.

The two ends, single company. The middle of the group sits near zero at −1.15 points; almost nothing sits near it.

Funds writing on a single company have the tightest median of the three at −1.15 points, and the widest spread by a distance: 65 points between the tenth fund and the ninetieth, against 15 for those writing on a broad index. The median is the wrong summary for that group. Almost nothing sits near it.

The reason is that a single company is as likely to fall as to rise. When it falls, a fund that sold the upside keeps the premium and finishes ahead of it; when it runs, the fund is left a long way behind. Both happen inside one quarter, so the middle of that group sits near zero while its two ends are AMYY at −153.19 pts against AMD and LLII at +119.49 pts against LLY. The funds writing on an index are all facing the same index, so they sit together, and where that index rose they sit together behind it.

The largest gap in the second quarter of 2026 was AMYY, which writes on AMD. AMD returned +176.35% over the quarter and the fund returned +23.16% in total, including +20.36% paid in cash. That is −153.19 pts, and it is not a fault. A fund that sells the upside away cannot follow a holding that rises like that, and the size of the gap is the size of the move it sold.

One of 275 funds measured over 62 trading days. Percentage points.

Where the cash was larger than the return

The ten widest, in points of the fund’s own starting price. A positive number means the distribution over the quarter was larger than everything the holder made, so the rest of it came out of the price. That is what the numbers say rather than an accusation: some of these funds are doing exactly what they were built to do in a quarter their underlying fell. It is the number to have in front of you before reading a distribution rate as an income.

Funds whose cash exceeded their total return, 2026-Q2. Source: ETFIQ.

Every fund, 2026-Q2

All 275 funds, furthest behind its benchmark first. Cash is distributions over the quarter as a share of the price at the start of it. Total return is price and cash together. Numbers in percentage points.

How this was computed

Each fund’s total return across the quarter on split and distribution adjusted closes, its price return on split adjusted closes alone, and the difference between them as cash. Against the total return of its benchmark over the same two dates. Prices are exchange end-of-day from Tiingo.

What a fund writes on is read from the category’s own universe file rather than decided here: a fund whose name says one thing and whose prospectus says another is that category’s question to settle, and settling it twice is how two pages come to disagree. Where the thing written on has no investable price of its own, the category names the proxy ETF it uses and that is what is measured, which is what the second row of the table above counts.

What was left out, and why

A fund that did not trade the whole quarter has no quarter, and a fund whose price is unchanged on more than half its days is a quote rather than a trade. Both tests run before any fund is measured. The first excluded a large number this quarter because this category grew quickly through it, and a fund that listed in May measured over the part of the quarter it had, printed beside funds that had all of it, is the most common way this number is got wrong.

Funds excluded and why, 2026-Q2. Source: ETFIQ.

Where the quarter starts

Each return here runs from the first close inside the quarter to the last, so the move on the quarter’s first trading day is left out. An issuer’s quarterly number starts at the prior quarter-end close, so the two can differ by that day’s move, which for a leveraged or single-stock fund can be several points.

Check it yourself

Every number above is in the file below, fund by fund, with the excluded funds and the reason for each. The data ETFIQ computed is free to use, including commercially, with attribution to ETFIQ and a link; the terms a fund row restates are its issuer's and stay under its owner's terms.