Morningstar Analysis Points to ‘Misleading’ Data on YieldMax ETFs

How much yield could YieldMax max if YieldMax … you know the rest.

The exchange-traded fund issuer YieldMax has attracted investors with impressive yields (sometimes cited as over 51% “distribution rates”), and gobbled up an impressive $22 billion in net inflows since 2022, according to a recent Morningstar blog post. But analyst and author of the post Jeffrey Ptak said there’s quite a bit of nuance to sift through first. “I don’t know what investors think they’re getting, though it stands to reason they expect to receive large distributions of income and gains — i.e. yield — which is not what’s been delivered for the most part,” Ptak told Advisor Upside.

Flip a COIN

The post points to an interesting data point: On average investors in YieldMax ETFs lost some 11% per year since late 2022 assuming they reinvested 80% of the distributions they received, Ptak found. One fund in particular — the COIN Option Income Strategy ETF (CONY) — hit annual returns of 42% between its inception in August 2023 and April 2025. However, in that same time, investors lost $35.5 million, according to the Morningstar analysis. CONY’s massive distributions look enticing on paper, but may come with a caveat: 

• From inception through July 2025, the fund made 23 distributions totalling $1.3 billion. The average monthly distribution was 8% of the fund’s assets, according to the Morningstar blog post.
• But the bulk of that was capital returned to investors, not income made on their investments. So that means roughly 83 cents of every dollar the ETF distributed was return of capital.

To be fair, some of CONY’s losses are chalked up to poor timing by investors, per the analysis. That roughly two-year stretch from the inception of the fund included multiple instances where investors piled hundreds of millions of dollars into CONY right after strong gains, but also right before downturns. 

“My fiduciary responsibility is to investors, not day traders, any more than Jensen Huang has no responsibility to people who day trade Nvidia,” said YieldMax strategist Michael Khouw, adding that investors who reinvested dividends back into the fund would be up 130.5% since debut. He also said those distributions made sense for investors because they won’t owe taxes right away on return of capital. 

Yield the Floor. However, Ptak said investors may not know the difference and that the company’s advertised “distribution rates” on its website can consist of both income and return of capital. “This is the ‘yield’ in ‘YieldMax,’” Ptak said. “Given those distribution rates aren’t sustainable from income generation or realization of gains, yes I think it’s misleading.”