Well, Friday was payday, so here's how my divvy portfolio stacked up.

SMCY paid out $1.5795/share, which was very nice, beating the $1.41 from last month. Continues to be my favorite.

MSTY paid out $1.4707, which is not bad at all. It is a drop from the 2.37 last month, but you just can't expect a 2$+ divvy every month, I suppose. No complaints.

I did not expand my holdings in either one. As mentioned last time I branched out into a weekly payer, ULTY. This was my first week to receive a dividend from ULTY and it came in at 0.0945, which is right about where it's been paying every Friday since March.

It's not exact, but a rule of thumb with ULTY is that 1000 shares buys you $100/week in payout. Shares are hovering around $6, so $6,000 gets you about $400/month, or a little less.

In contrast, SMCY closed at $18.62. $6,000 would net you about 322 shares, which would have paid out this month $508.60. Last month would have netted $454, though.

$6,000 in MSTY at Friday's close of 20.59 would bring in 291 shares which would have paid out this month $428. Last month's super divvy would have netted $689.67 for the same number of shares.

So, there's bigger spikes on payouts with the two monthlies, but also some dips. And, their share price changes all the time. ULTY pays every week, which is nice. With all that in mind, I'm probably going to be increasing my exposure to ULTY in the future.

MSTY has jumped around in price this month from the 20-22 range. It has long stopped the massive declines, although it rode up to an ATH of 46.50 last year before falling back down to earth. It's all time low was 17 something during the height of tariff fearmongering. So, 20 or thereabouts seems to be a stable price, at least for now.

SMCY has an ATH of 59.20, which it will probably never see again. It suffered the downward slide like so many of these high payers do, but it too seems to like $20. Last month it's been hanging out between $20.xx and $18.xx. Alas, my average is around $20.15, and it feels like on most days it shows red in my account. However, these are held as money producers, not value increasing assets, so I live with the semi-permanent red without complaint.

ULTY still hangs around $6, where it has since the change in its approach back in Feb. Before then it was steadily going down. During the dustup in April it hit its ATL of $5.23, but quickly went back up into the 6's and has stayed there for the most part, ever since.

With Juneteenth the weekly payout for ULTY that week was delayed, resulting in two distributions this week on Monday and Friday. The same thing is slated to occur the week of July 4.

Speaking of double payouts, the YieldMax funds pay every four weeks, as opposed to on a particular day of the month. Since 52/4=13, it means their funds will find a month somewhere to offer a double payment in. For Group D, which is where MSTY and SMCY are, August is the month so that's nice.

A lot of people pay much attention to that distribution schedule of A,B,C and D groups and buy in to funds from each so they get a payout every week. But with the mad success of ULTY since they went to weekly distributions, I think more money has shifted over to weekly payers.

ULTY remains my favorite, and it's gaining in popularity. The big thing is its NAV decay has pretty much halted since they changed their prospectus and went to weekly payouts. Even more important, instead of focusing on one single company and writing options on it, they hold a variety of stocks to play with. When one stops being volatile or otherwise becomes less profitable to write covered calls on, they'll sell it and buy a different stock. This has resulted in steady payouts hovering around 9 cents/share every week for a while now.

Other ETF companies are paying attention to the weekly distributions and how investors might approach buying their product or not. Roundhill recently announced they would rearrange payouts on their weeklies so that investors could get income every day of the week, much like YMax set things up with their four groups of monthly producers on alternate weeks so people could get paid every week. I hear that some daily payers are in the wings as well, but I can't imagine the income would be that great on those. In my thinking, a weekly payer is good enough.

Also, IMO some competing companies with the YieldMax funds seem to have learned the wrong lesson from ULTY's success. They seem to focus on the fact ULTY's NAV stopped declining after shifting to a weekly payout. But the mixed basket of funds it can pick and choose for options is really more responsible for that, I think. For instance, they hold/held HIMS. After it dropped recently, ULTY's NAV barely blipped because it was a small percentage of their overall holdings. Single stock funds are not so agile. They will decline precipitously on a drop from the underlying, then struggle mightily to regain NAV because the options limit their upside.

On the other hand, buying and selling by investors does not affect their price much. When more people buy, they increase the number of shares available to purchase, and reduce them when people leave the fund. So the price of single-stock options funds are tied to their underlying more heavily, especially on drops. It helps when the underlying soars in price, but gains are capped for the ETF because they're playing options.

So to recap for my holdings: I'm happy with my current shares of MSTY and SMCY. Not adding more, not selling any. And I am looking forward to the double payout in August. I continue to add shares of ULTY, watching for dips below $6.20, which is about where my current average is.

ETFs I'm watching: I'm keeping an eye on YETH, which is one of those funds switching to weekly payouts in July, along with its sister fund YBTC. Both are Roundhill products and produce distributions from Ether and Bitcoin, respectively. YETH paid out over $2/share per month since conception last year except in November. Since the start of this year, except for January when they had a big $3.85/share payout, distributions have ranged from $1.08 to 1.89 per month. YBTC is too expensive for me. I'm afraid NAV decay may hit it, even after going weekly. As mentioned, I don't think paying weekly is the special sauce that prevents NAV decay. But YETH is very interesting and I'm keeping an eye on it.

I'm also watching TSYY, a GraniteShares "YieldBoost" product. It's a weekly payer now, as of this summer. It always paid out a decent monthly distribution, and I've been watching to see if the overall amount stayed the same. So far it has, paying about 30 cents a week. What makes it so interesting is it's really cheap at the moment, hovering in the $10/share range. And 1000 shares would bring in somewhere around $300/week.

The risk is that it's still new, and it's changed only recently to weekly, like in the last month. So it could all go belly up, lose value, begin paying a lot less, etc. Also, it is writing options on a single underlying stock, a practice which as mentioned is starting to lose popularity. And, TSLA is not necessarily the high-flyer it once was.

Having said all that, the underlying is not super-important with these things, the volatility of the underlying is, and TSLA remains fairly volatile. Anyway, it's worth watching.

I'm also watching USOY, a Defiance product. I mentioned this one in a previous post. It holds Treasuries but is focused on writing options on oil. It's been hovering in the $10 range since April, paying .50-.80/month, nothing exciting. But like TSYY, it jumped on the weekly payout bandwagon, their first one coming in last week at just under 15 cents. Not yet convinced to buy, but watching closely.

Finally, I'm still watching MRNY which has MRNA as the underlying. The sentiment here seems to be people are watching to see if MRNA can finally make a comeback and regain momentum. Meanwhile MRNY remains in the sub-$3 range, and it's been there a long time. This month it paid a 19 cent distribution, up from its more usual 12, making holders rejoice, I'm sure.

For anyone still interested, here are my continued ruminations on high yielding funds.

I'm maintaining shares in monthly distributors MSTY and SMCY. Of the two, MSTY has lost some of its luster lately.

SMCY paid out 1.4128 in May, 1.5795 in June, and 1.6102 in July. As always, someone with 1,000 shares simply moves the decimal place. So, they would have received $1,412.80 in May and so on. The share price has jumped between $18 and $21 since June, making this a lucrative deal for anyone fortunate enough to buy in under $20.

MSTY paid out 2.3734 in May, and there was much rejoicing. But in June it distributed 1.4707 and in July it paid out 1.2382. This has led to considerable irritation and gnashing of the teeth on discussion boards covering MSTY. But even so, a buck and change every month is still good coin for any ETF. It's just less than what many have become accustomed to receiving from this product. Enthusiasm has waned but I'm still keeping my shares. The price has been jumping between $21 and $23 since June.

ULTY hit a billion AUM recently, a phenomenal milestone. Loads of confidence in this ETF as more and more money flows into it. The secret sauce is consistency. The longer it stays consistent, the more money flows into its coffers. It bobs up and down in price between $6.00 and $6.30. I'm in at an average of $6.19. And it pays out almost every week in the 9 cents per share range. The last time it dipped below 9 cents was June 20 when it distributed 0.0875/share. The last time it paid out more than 9 cents was on May 15 when it distributed 0.1059/share. All other times have been firmly in the 9 cent range. So, 1,000 shares at $6.19 would cost someone $6,190 and it would pay between $90-100 every Friday. It remains the most popular YieldMax fund at the moment for that very reason, and its increasing AUM each week proves that out.

I mentioned earlier that I was keeping an eye on TSYY, a GraniteShares product that writes options on 2X leveraged funds focused on TSLA. It's an interesting concept that seems to be working based on their payouts, but like so many of these ETFs their NAV has fallen off a cliff. These ETFs seem to typically start life at $25 or $50/share and then proceed to drop like a rock for months. But we're seeing them find stability at some point. ULTY's came after going from monthly distributions to weekly and many other ETFs have followed suit, although as I've mentioned I'm not so sure that's the sole reason for ULTY's NAV stability. Anyway, GraniteShares jumped on the weekly payout bandwagon and I kept an eye on TSYY, finally buying it when their price dipped below $10/share. At that point, they also lowered their distribution from about 30 cents/week to about 25 cents/week. After I bought in, the price continued dropping into the lower $9 range, but then bounced back up some this week. We'll see what happens with that in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, I now get another weekly distribution on Tuesdays along with the one on Fridays when ULTY pays out.

Things I'm keeping an eye on: MRNY is one I've observed for a while. I mentioned earlier how the NAV shrinkage was just enormous when its underlying tanked, bringing it down to about $2.25/share. It has managed to claw its way back up and increase distributions as well. As of Friday, its share price was $2.73. Its last distribution on June 20 was 0.19. So, a person holding a hypothetical 1,000 shares would have received $190. But if they only paid, let's say $2.30 a share, they would have spent $2300. So, in my mind for a comparable amount to the more typically priced fund, our imaginary investor should have bought 10,000 shares for $23,000. Then he would have received a distribution of $1900 last month. The problem is, MRNY looked more risky to dump that much money into last month, so our hypothetical investor probably does not exist. But MRNY is starting to look a little safer with the NAV rising, now. And the higher distribution. So maybe that guy will exist this month or next if things continue moving up for MRNY.

And ULTY hits $1.3 billion. It is rocking. This guy has an entire Substack devoted to ULTY. Interesting reading. Lots of charts and graphs.

https://theboldux.substack.com/