How the Battle Arena scores portfolios
Every matchup is decided by data, not opinion — including how each portfolio actually performed over time. Here's exactly how the numbers are built, so you can trust the verdict or check our work.
Performance over time
For every portfolio we reconstruct a daily index from January 2023 onward by holding its current target weights and reinvesting each holding's distributions at the ex-date. Three lines tell the whole story: total return (distributions reinvested), price / NAV only (no dividends), and cumulative income (cash collected). The chart rebases both portfolios to $10,000 at the start of their common history so the comparison is apples-to-apples.
The metrics, by dimension
Total return
Growth of $10,000
What a $10,000 stake would have become, with every distribution reinvested at its ex-date close — synthesized from each holding's raw price history plus its dividend history (prices are unadjusted, so total return is built, not read off an adjusted close).
Total return (1y) & CAGR
Trailing 1-year total return, and the annualized growth rate over the full common history. The honest bottom line: income plus price change, together.
Income
Distribution yield & monthly income
Holdings-weighted forward distribution rate (capped at 60% per holding against bad data), and what it pays per month on $10,000 — the figure income investors actually feel.
Income steadiness (CV)
Coefficient of variation of the realized monthly distributions — lower is steadier. A headline yield hides a cut; this surfaces it.
Principal / NAV
NAV change & the erosion gap
The price-only line vs the total-return line. The gap between them is exactly how much of your “yield” was your own capital handed back — the core yield-trap tell.
Max drawdown
The worst peak-to-trough decline of the total-return path. How much pain you'd have had to sit through.
Risk
Risk tier & volatility
The holdings-weighted DivAgent 5-tier risk score (1 = Cornerstone, 5 = High Octane) and the annualized volatility of daily returns. Lower is safer.
Sortino & risk-adjusted return
Return per unit of downside (Sortino) and total return ÷ risk tier. Chasing return without pricing in risk is how income investors get hurt.
Data, cadence & honest limits
- Validated against an external benchmark: the synthesized total return reconciles with Yahoo's dividend-adjusted close within 0.5%/yr across funds spanning T-bills to single-stock income ETFs.
- The backtest is hypothetical and fixed-weight (today's target weights applied to history, rebalanced daily) — not the live path of any real account. It excludes fees, taxes, and slippage.
- Distributions may include return of capital, which inflates the income line; the total-return-vs-price gap is the honest counter-signal, and tiers 4–5 carry the most ROC risk.
- Funds have different inception dates, so each matchup is clipped to the two portfolios' common history (labeled on the page). Newer funds simply have a shorter window — never back-filled.
- Only currently-listed holdings exist in our data (a mild upward survivorship bias), and price history starts in January 2023, so there is no true 5-year window.
- Series and metrics are recomputed nightly from fresh prices and dividends, then cached — the chart, the matrix, and the verdict all read the same numbers.