How our data works
Last updated: 10 September 2026
Some of what this calculator shows is checked against fund issuers. Some of it is estimated. Those are very different things, and this page sets out which is which — including the errors we found in our own data and corrected.
Two kinds of data, held to different standards
Every holding in our reference set is split into two categories, because they deserve different levels of trust.
Identity — checked. What a ticker actually is: the fund's real name, its issuer, what it holds or writes options on, and how often it distributes. For 214 holdings this has been verified against the issuer's own materials, and the source URL is recorded against each record. These facts rarely change, so once checked they stand.
Market data — estimated. Yields, prices and growth rates are AI-generated estimates based on a fund's strategy and history. They are not live quotes and should not be treated as current. They are refreshed periodically, but a refresh replaces one estimate with another — it does not make them accurate.
The practical upshot: trust the tool on what a fund is and how often it pays. Check the current yield with your broker before acting on anything.
What the reference set covers
- 101 ETFs, concentrated in income and covered-call funds across nine issuers
- 498 stocks, 33 REITs, and 7 BDCs and MLPs
- 69 Dividend Aristocrats and 56 Dividend Kings
- 90 weekly-paying and 13 monthly-paying holdings
- 5 renamed tickers and 1 delisted fund, kept deliberately — see below
Errors we found in our own data
In September 2026 the fund reference this site had used since launch was checked against issuer sources for the first time. Most of it was wrong. These are the corrections, because anyone who modelled these funds earlier was given bad numbers and deserves to know which.
| Ticker | We had said | Actually |
|---|---|---|
| QDTE | S&P 500 0DTE fund | Tracks the Nasdaq-100, not the S&P 500 |
| HOOW | Home Depot covered call | Robinhood (HOOD), and leveraged to ~120% of weekly return — not a covered-call fund |
| CHPY | Chipotle options | A semiconductor portfolio |
| GPTY | Alphabet options, ~25% yield | An AI & tech portfolio, distributing above 40% |
| QDVO | Enhanced Dividend Income ETF | That is DIVO's name. QDVO is Amplify's Growth & Income ETF |
| TSLY, NVDY, AMZY, MSFO, YMAG, YMAX | Monthly distributions | Weekly. YieldMax moved its lineup off monthly on 14 October 2025 |
| STAG | Monthly payer | Moved to quarterly in 2026 |
Distribution frequency is not a cosmetic detail here. It sets how often income compounds: a weekly payer reinvests fifty-two times a year against a quarterly payer's four. Getting it wrong changes the projection itself, not just the label.
Tickers change more often than people expect
Five holdings in our set have changed symbol, four of them within about eighteen months. Rather than delete them, we keep them and point at the successor, so an older watchlist still resolves.
- JEPY → WDTE (Defiance, 2024)
- SJW → HTO (SJW Group became H2O America, 2025)
- LANC → MZTI (Lancaster Colony became The Marzetti Company, 2025)
- SATS → ECHO (EchoStar, June 2026)
- FI → FISV (Fiserv reverted to its former symbol, 2025)
One fund in the set, WKLY (SoFi Weekly Dividend ETF), was delisted in February 2024. It is retained and marked as such, because silently dropping it from a portfolio would be worse than saying so.
Return of capital, and why headline yields mislead
Many high-yield income funds distribute a large share of what they pay as return of capital. That is not profit. It is your own money being handed back, and it reduces the fund's net asset value as it goes.
This is not a fringe case. One recent distribution from GPTY was roughly 99% return of capital, and distributions from the large midstream MLPs are commonly cited at 70–90%. A calculator that treats those payments as income and compounds them for thirty years will produce a number with very little connection to reality.
The tool does not currently model return of capital, and you should treat projections for funds yielding above roughly 15% with real caution as a result.
Structure changes what a payment means
- MLPs (EPD, ET, MPLX) issue a Schedule K-1 instead of a 1099, which complicates your tax filing and can create liabilities in retirement accounts.
- BDCs (MAIN, ARCC, OBDC, HTGC) mostly pay ordinary income rather than qualified dividends, so the after-tax result is usually worse than the headline suggests.
- Mortgage REITs (AGNC) earn an interest-rate spread rather than rent, making them far more rate-sensitive than a property REIT.
- Leveraged weekly funds (Roundhill's WeeklyPay range) target a multiple of a single stock's weekly return. They are not covered-call funds and carry a very different risk profile.
What we still don't know
Of 639 holdings, 214 have issuer-verified identity. The rest are recorded but unverified — mostly S&P 500 constituents included for coverage, whose names and sectors come from index listings rather than from each company.
When a ticker cannot be verified we do not delete it. A symbol we cannot find is far more often a fund that is new, renamed, or listed under an issuer we did not expect than one that does not exist — we have been wrong about that in both directions. Unrecognised tickers are kept, flagged, and offered alongside close alternatives instead of being dropped from your portfolio in silence.