YieldMaxCalc
Calculator/MSTY

MSTY Dividend Calculator

YieldMax MSTR Option Income Strategy ETF — Project your returns with dividend reinvestment (DRIP). Pays weekly.

MSTY Dividend Calculator

= $27.8876 / share / year

0% = yield stays constant. Negative models normalization (e.g. -10%/yr).

1Y: -76.9%

years
Portfolio Growth

No DRIP vs DRIP

Portfolio Value$10$362.1KTotal Dividends$21.2K$1.52MAnnual Dividend$10$384.3KYoC0.10%3848.13%

DRIP Advantage

Total invested: $10.0K

+3.7M%

$362.1K more

Income Goal
/ month

Reached in year 10

MSTY crosses $378.0K/yr ($31.5K/mo) of dividend income in year 10 of the projection. Goal auto-suggested from your inputs — bump it up to model a stretch target.

Dividend history →Total return →

Scenarios

Three realistic paths for high-yield funds: yield holds, yield compresses, yield normalizes. Click any card to load it.

What is MSTY?

MSTY is the flagship YieldMax ETF and the largest by assets under management. It generates weekly distributions by selling call option spreads on MicroStrategy (MSTR) — a stock that moves almost in lockstep with Bitcoin due to MicroStrategy's massive BTC holdings. This makes MSTY effectively a leveraged Bitcoin volatility play disguised as an income fund.

Latest MSTY distribution

ScheduleAll YieldMax →
Per share
$0.5553
Distribution rate
105.25%
30-day SEC yield
0.98%
ROC %
99.10%
Declared
May 6, 2026
Ex-date
May 7, 2026
Payable
May 8, 2026
Source →

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MSTY Real Yield

Headline yield adjusted for NAV erosion (1Y)

HeadlineReal65.0%→-61.9%
NAV -76.9%

127% of the headline yield has been offset by share price decline over the past 1Y.

See full total return analysis →

MSTY Dividend History

View all 50 payments and full table →
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How MSTY generates income

MSTY is the flagship YieldMax ETF and the largest by assets under management. It generates weekly distributions by selling call option spreads on MicroStrategy (MSTR) — a stock that moves almost in lockstep with Bitcoin due to MicroStrategy's massive BTC holdings. This makes MSTY effectively a leveraged Bitcoin volatility play disguised as an income fund.

The distributions can be enormous — annualized rates above 80% are common — because MSTR is one of the most volatile large-cap stocks in the market. Higher volatility means fatter option premiums, which means bigger weekly payouts. But this cuts both ways: when MSTR drops 30% in a month, MSTY's NAV drops with it, and you're collecting income on a rapidly shrinking principal.

The elephant in the room is return of capital (ROC). MSTY's ROC percentage regularly exceeds 90%, meaning the vast majority of your "dividend" isn't investment income — it's your own money being handed back to you, reducing your cost basis. This isn't inherently bad (it defers taxes), but investors who don't understand ROC often think they're earning 80%+ yields when the real economic return is much lower.

MSTY is best understood as a tool for investors who are bullish on Bitcoin/MSTR long-term but want to extract weekly cash flow rather than wait for price appreciation. If MSTR goes up, you participate (with a cap). If it goes down, you've collected premiums that partially offset the loss. The weekly distributions are not sustainable at current rates if MSTR declines significantly.

Underlying
MSTR (MicroStrategy)
Real exposure
Bitcoin (via MSTR's BTC holdings)
Distribution
Weekly (Group 2, Wednesday)
Typical ROC
80-99% (check latest announcement)
Expense ratio
0.99%
Key risk
NAV erosion if MSTR declines

About the MSTY Dividend Calculator

This MSTY dividend calculator projects how your position grows with and without DRIP (Dividend Reinvestment). Every input is prefilled with live MSTY data — current price, latest per-share distribution, detected payment frequency, and historical CAGR — so you can hit calculate immediately, or override any field to model your own assumptions.

The MSTY DRIP calculator runs two parallel scenarios: one where every distribution is reinvested into more MSTY shares, and one where distributions are taken as cash and never compounded. The gap between the two curves is the compounding premium — the extra wealth you build by letting MSTY dividends buy more shares over time. Extra monthly contributions, tax rates, and custom dividend growth rates are all supported, and every calculation runs in your browser with no additional API calls after page load.

Why this calculator is more accurate than most

Traditional DRIP calculators treat dividend-per-share and share-price as two independent quantities that grow at their own separate rates. That works fine for stocks like SCHD or KO, where management sets the payout and the stock price moves with the business. It breaks badly for option-income ETFs like MSTY, NVDY, or TSLY, where distributions are sourced from option premium on the underlying — meaning the dividend dollar is mechanically a fraction of NAV, not a separate variable. Let those two quantities compound independently and you get absurd outputs (trillion-dollar portfolios from $10K) because the implied yield silently grows to 400%+ as price collapses faster than the dollar dividend.

We solve this with two projection modes. Dividend Growth mode is the standard model — correct for dividend-growth stocks and traditional income ETFs. Yield-on-NAV mode (auto-selected when starting yield exceeds 20%) locks the forward yield and recomputes distributions each year asyield × current NAV, so as price falls, dividend-per-share falls proportionally. This matches the physics of option-income funds and produces realistic projections instead of fantasy numbers.

You can toggle between the two modes above the input form. For MSTY — a YieldMax option-income ETF — yield-on-NAV is the default and we recommend keeping it on.

The two levers that change results the most are the growth assumptions and the holding period. For a volatile, high-yield fund, a 0% or slightly negative growth assumption is usually more realistic than extrapolating a historical CAGR, because distribution levels often decay as implied volatility normalizes. For stable dividend ETFs and index funds, the 5Y CAGR is a reasonable baseline. The MSTY dividend history page shows every past payment in detail, and the total return analyzer strips out NAV erosion to show your real yield.

MSTY DRIP calculator — frequently asked questions

How does the MSTY DRIP calculator work?▾
The MSTY calculator simulates two parallel scenarios: one where every dividend is paid out as cash, and one where every dividend automatically buys more MSTY shares. It uses the current MSTY price, the most recent dividend payment, the detected payment frequency (weekly), and a historical dividend growth rate to project your balance month by month. You can override any prefilled value — custom yield, custom growth rate, extra monthly contributions, and tax drag — and the chart updates instantly in your browser with no server calls after the initial page load.
Why does the MSTY calculator prefill a yield that's different from the headline number I see elsewhere?▾
We use forward annualization — the most recent per-share payment multiplied by the payment frequency — rather than the trailing twelve-month sum. For MSTY paying weekly, that is the most honest estimate of what you would earn going forward if the next payout matches the most recent one. Headline "TTM yield" figures include payouts from many months ago, which overstates the income of ETFs whose distributions have been trending down and understates the income of ETFs whose distributions have been trending up.
What dividend growth rate should I use for MSTY?▾
YieldMax ETFs like MSTY do not have a stable dividend growth rate. Distributions are a function of the implied volatility of the underlying stock at each options roll, so they can drop 50% one month and rise 40% the next. A reasonable default for long projections is 0% growth, or a small negative number if you expect volatility to normalize downward. Our 3Y and 5Y CAGR numbers exist for reference but should not be extrapolated.
Does the MSTY calculator account for taxes?▾
Yes. You can enter a tax rate and the calculator will deduct it from each dividend before reinvesting or paying out. For MSTY, the realistic rate depends on whether your dividends are classified as qualified (lower rate), ordinary (higher rate), or return of capital (not taxed until sale). Covered-call ETFs like MSTY often produce large amounts of return of capital, which is taxed differently from regular income — consult a tax advisor for your specific situation. The calculator applies the same rate to every payment; real-world tax treatment can be more nuanced.
Can I use the MSTY calculator for retirement account projections?▾
Yes. If you plan to hold MSTY in a Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, or 401(k), set the tax rate to 0% — distributions inside those accounts are not taxed year-by-year. In a Traditional IRA you will pay ordinary income tax on withdrawals later, so the post-tax balance will be lower than what the calculator shows; in a Roth IRA, qualified withdrawals are tax-free and the calculator figures are directly applicable. The "extra monthly contributions" field is useful for modeling ongoing IRA or 401(k) payroll contributions into the same position.
How is MSTY different from buying the underlying directly?▾
MSTY does not own MSTR — it holds Treasury bills as collateral and sells call options on MSTR. The upside is capped (the calls limit how much MSTY can appreciate when MSTR rallies), the downside is almost fully exposed (MSTY drops along with MSTR in declines), and the option premium is distributed as weekly income. Over long periods, buying MSTR directly has historically produced more total return, but MSTY produces current income in cash, which some investors prefer.
MSTY Dividend Schedule ->MSTY Total Return Analyzer →MSTY Dividend History →Compare MSTY →Generic Dividend CalculatorBrowse all dividend tickers →Why is MSTY moving? →