How to read a YieldMax holdings file

A holdings file shows how a fund implemented its mandate on one date. The prospectus defines what it may do; the file records what it did. Start from the overview of the structure and check the fund taxonomybefore reading any file as a synthetic single-stock portfolio — several YieldMax products are not.

Use the holdings download on the fund’s official page. Save it with both its stated as-of date and the time you retrieved it. These are not the same thing, and the download date is the one that matters least. Issuer files are overwritten in place, so a URL that served one portfolio yesterday serves a different one today.

For month-end evidence that stays citable, search SEC EDGAR by fund series for Form N-PORT. The daily file is timelier and may be corrected; N-PORT is slower and standardized. The statutory prospectus governs what either is allowed to contain.

Security description names the issuer or the contract. Ticker identifies exchange-listed securities and is often blank for Treasuries and derivatives. CUSIP identifies shares and debt; options use other conventions.

Quantity is shares, face amount or contracts depending on the instrument, and a negative quantity normally marks a short or written position. Market value is the current carrying value — not notional. Portfolio weight usually divides market value by net assets. Cash, receivables and payables appear on their own lines.

For an option, four things identify it: underlying, type, strike and expiration. A fifth, the multiplier, decides what the numbers mean. Standard US equity contracts normally represent 100 shares, but confirm it in the file rather than assuming, because corporate actions create adjusted contracts that do not.

Notional ≈ contracts × multiplier × underlying price

That figure is the reference exposure. It is not the option’s market value and not its maximum loss, and conflating the three is the most common way a holdings file gets misread.

Option rows usually carry a symbol in root, date, type and strike order. Taking an illustrative example:

The strike encodes three implied decimal places, so eight digits carry both dollars and fractional strikes without a separator. Equity-option specifications.

Treasury bills and notes are the collateral and the interest-earning assets. Check maturity, face amount, market value and any footnote saying they are pledged. Cash and receivables reflect trade settlement, premiums and distribution liabilities.

For the synthetic exposure, look for purchased calls and written puts on the same underlying with related strikes and expirations. They need not match one for one: the adviser may use several series or other instruments entirely. The short put is what supplies the downside, as the synthetic-exposure guide derives.

For the income overlay, look for further written calls at shorter expirations or different strikes. A written lower-strike call paired with a purchased higher-strike call at the same expiration is a credit call spread, and the contract counts show whether the overlay covers all of the synthetic notional or only part.

A long-only portfolio lists positive assets summing near 100% of net assets. A derivative portfolio can show assets well above 100% and written options as negative weights, because net assets are total assets less liabilities. Receivables and payables create further offsets.

Option notional can also exceed net assets on its own, since only the option’s current value enters the weight. Never add notional percentages to accounting weights. Keep market value, weight against net assets, and underlying-equivalent notional in three separate columns, because they answer three separate questions.

MSTY’s SEC schedule dated 31 January 2026 reported a purchased MSTR call expiring 6 February 2026 at a $157.50 strike. The filing stated a 100-share multiplier.

One line, two numbers that differ by a factor of about forty. The notional is the reference exposure the position carries; the market value is what it was worth that day. A holdings summary that reports only the second makes the fund look far smaller than its risk.

The same schedule listed written MSTR calls expiring 6 February and written puts expiring 20 February and 20 March. Their total fair value was a liability of $201,641,068, against premiums originally received of $193,820,559 — the gap between the two being exactly why premium received cannot be treated as profit. It also footnoted $442,987,306 of securities committed as collateral for those written options. SEC schedule of investments.

This is a month-end snapshot from 31 January 2026 and describes no other date. It is used here because it is citable at a fixed address, which a daily file overwritten each afternoon is not.

Some files place written options in the main table with a negative quantity or weight; others use a separate schedule. In an SEC schedule, parentheses conventionally indicate negative amounts. Read the file legend before treating any sign as a trading direction.

Then combine type with direction, because neither means anything alone. A purchased put has a positive quantity and negative directional exposure. A written put has a negative quantity and positive directional exposure to the stock. “The fund holds puts” is not a statement about which way it is positioned.

Group positions by underlying and expiration, and convert each option to share-equivalents as contracts times multiplier. Comparing long-call and short-put share-equivalents at related strikes gives a rough terminal mapping; anything more precise needs option deltas from a reliable source.

Then measure the written-call coverage against the synthetic-long share-equivalents. A fund with 10,000 synthetic-long equivalents writing 8,000 call equivalents is roughly 80% covered by contract count — a structural ratio only, since different strikes and deltas behave differently.

Represent call spreads as two legs. The short lower-strike call generates the premium; the long higher-strike call costs premium and caps the short leg’s loss above its strike. A net contract count hides that shape completely.

Sum the positive asset market values, subtract written-option and other liabilities, and compare with reported net assets. Small differences come from rounding and omitted accruals. Divide net assets by shares outstanding and check against official NAV for the same date.

Do not expect notional to reconcile to anything. It measures reference exposure while fair value measures the current asset or liability. Both are needed: a $100 million notional call can carry a small market value and still move NAV materially.

Form N-PORT provides month-end portfolio information and risk metrics on a regulatory timetable. Public availability is delayed, so it verifies history rather than current positioning. Schedule-of- investments exhibits give readable strikes, expirations, premiums received and collateral footnotes.

Annual and semiannual statements add realized and unrealized results, investment income, expenses and changes in net assets. Those are the records that establish whether premium receipts became gains and how the distributions related to the period’s economics. A holdings file cannot answer that, which is worth remembering before using one to argue about sustainability.

For forecasting, only files published before a declaration can be used without look-ahead bias — a point the estimation guide returns to, since issuer pages overwrite files at the same address.

1. Download the holdings file from the fund's official page and record both its stated as-of date and your retrieval time.
2. Confirm the fund's category and read its current prospectus, so the file is interpreted against what the fund is permitted to do.
3. Separate positive asset positions from written-option liabilities and other offsets.
4. Identify the Treasury and cash collateral, including any securities footnoted as pledged.
5. Decode each option's underlying, type, strike, expiration and contract multiplier.
6. Calculate market-value weight and underlying-equivalent notional as separate columns.
7. Locate the purchased calls and written puts that form the synthetic exposure.
8. Locate the additional written calls or call spreads that form the income overlay.
9. Compare against the previous file to identify rolls.
10. Reconcile the totals with reported net assets, and with N-PORT and the financial statements.

Two habits make the rest reproducible: keep the raw file untouched and do the work in a normalized copy, so later corrections stay auditable; and label adjusted or nonstandard contracts separately rather than assuming every one represents 100 shares.