AMZY Analysis
YieldMax AMZN Option Income Strategy ETF — is the distribution income, or your own capital coming back?
Partly returned capital
Over the last 1Y, AMZY's 46.0% distribution yield was offset by a 22.6% NAV decline, leaving a real yield of 13.0%. Only about 28% of the headline yield was economically yours.
From here, AMZY would need a 29% price gain just to return to where it started the window — before any further distributions are counted.
This verdict is generated from fixed thresholds applied to live price and distribution data, not written per fund. Two funds with the same profile always get the same wording.
How AMZY generates income
AMZY is a YieldMax single-stock option income ETF that generates weekly distributions by selling (writing) call option spreads on AMZN. The fund doesn't simply hold AMZN shares — instead, it uses a synthetic options strategy with U.S. Treasury securities as collateral to create exposure to AMZN while harvesting option premiums.
Each week, the fund sells call options on AMZN at strike prices above the current market price. The premiums collected from these sales are the primary source of the distributions paid to shareholders. When AMZN's implied volatility is high, option premiums are larger and distributions tend to be bigger. When volatility is low, distributions shrink.
The core trade-off: your upside participation in AMZN's price gains is capped at the sold call strike price. If AMZN rallies sharply, AMZY will underperform holding AMZN directly. In exchange, you receive weekly income that can be substantial — but it's not guaranteed and varies with market conditions.
A significant portion of AMZY's distributions may be classified as return of capital (ROC). This is not taxable income — it reduces your cost basis instead. Check the ROC % in the latest distribution announcement above to understand how much of your "dividend" is actually your own capital being returned.
- Underlying
- AMZN
- Strategy
- Call option spreads on AMZN
- Income source
- Option premiums
- Distribution
- Weekly (Group 2, Wednesday)
- Expense ratio
- 0.99%
- Issuer
- YieldMax (Tidal Financial)
AMZY price return since first distribution
The capital half of total return. Read it against the cumulative distributions below — the two together are what a holder actually earned.
Cumulative price return: -46.04%
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Cumulative distributions collected
Running total of per-share distributions since the first payment on record — 68 payments.
Total collected per share since inception: $20.99
Go deeper on AMZY than this page can
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