Two of the market's most popular income ETFs compared side-by-side. See which one fits your yield strategy.
What this means: Both MSTY and NVDY fall intoTier 4: Harvest. This suggests they share a similar risk profile and volatility expectation.
| Metric | MSTY | NVDY |
|---|---|---|
| Total Return (1Y) | 6.48% | 21.33% |
| NAV Change (1Y) | -69.82% | -21.00% |
| Max Drawdown | -79.35% | -37.89% |
| Beta | - | - |
* Returns include dividend reinvestment. Drawdown calculates peak-to-trough decline over trailing 12 months.
MSTY and NVDY are the attention-grabbing headline acts of the YieldMax ETF lineup. Their yields—64.27% and 40.29%—are not errors or promotional teases. They reflect genuine option premium collected weekly from two of the most volatile equity stories in the market: MicroStrategy (a leveraged Bitcoin holding company) and Nvidia (the AI infrastructure darling). Understanding what those yields actually represent is the only responsible starting point for this comparison.
MSTY writes covered calls on MSTR—MicroStrategy—which itself holds approximately 400,000+ Bitcoin on its balance sheet funded partly by debt. Owning MSTY is an indirect, option-dampened exposure to Bitcoin's volatility. NVDY writes calls on NVDA, a fundamentally profitable semiconductor company with dominant AI GPU market share. The risk profiles differ: MSTR is a volatility amplifier on an asset with no cash flows; NVDA is a cash-generating business with real earnings.
Both ETFs face NAV erosion when their underlying stocks decline—option premium doesn't fully offset capital loss. MSTY's erosion risk is higher because MSTR's leverage means Bitcoin drawdowns translate into amplified MSTR losses, which flow into MSTY's NAV. NVDY's erosion risk is real but somewhat buffered by Nvidia's underlying earnings power. DivAgent flags both at Tier 4 specifically because of this NAV erosion dynamic.
Weekly distributions in both ETFs fluctuate with implied volatility of the underlying. When Bitcoin enters low-volatility regimes, MSTY's weekly payments can drop 40-60% without warning. When Nvidia's options premium compresses—typically in stable sideways markets—NVDY distributions similarly decline. Neither ETF offers the predictable income that dividend investors typically seek.
Choose MSTY if:
Choose NVDY if:
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