If You’d Bought ULTY a Year Ago, This Is How Much You Would Have Made

While past performance doesn’t guarantee future results, it’s helpful to look back and see how much the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF (NYSEARCA:ULTY) rewarded its investors during the past year. As we’ll find out, the cash payouts really added up.

The distributions weren’t the only factor affecting the bottom line for ULTY’s shareholders, however. We can certainly say that the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF’s gigantic yield is “real,” but there’s another side to the story that might dissuade risk-averse investors.

ULTY Switches to Weekly Payouts

To get started, here’s a quick summary of how the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF works. The fund holds shares of a variety of stocks and also often trades options on those stocks.

Many of those stocks tend to be fast movers in both directions. Among the stocks in the ULTY ETF’s holdings list are IonQ (NYSE:IONQ), Rocket Lab USA (NASDAQ:RKLB), Microstrategy (NASDAQ:MSTR), Applovin (NASDAQ:APP), Reddit (NYSE:RDDT), Oklo (NYSE:OKLO), and Affirm Holdings (NASDAQ:AFRM).

The YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF capitalizes on the volatility of the stocks in its holdings list by selling covered call options (among other strategies). The fund’s options-trading strategies enable the ULTY ETF to deliver huge yield and provide more frequent payments than most ETFs.

As of August 25, 2025, the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF advertised an expected annualized distribution rate of 90.82%. Be aware, however, that YieldMax could change this yield at any time in the future.

Along with its massive expected yield, another main feature of the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF is its frequent payment schedule. The fund used to deliver its cash distributions on a monthly basis, but then it started paying on a weekly basis in March of 2025.

How Much ULTY Paid in the Past Year

So, how much cash did the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF put in its shareholders’ accounts during the past year? If you know this, then you can get a rough idea of the fund’s distribution potential for the future (though again, it’s not a guarantee).

I pulled out my old calculator and looked at all of ULTY’s payouts from the September 20, 2024 distribution date to the August 15, 2025 distribution date (that’s the most recently listed one on YieldMax’s website). Then, I rounded those distributions to the nearest penny and added them all up.

The total I got was $7.16. Is that a large amount of cash distributions? To determine this, I observed that the price of the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF a year ago (on the nearest trading day, which was August 26, 2024) was $11.44 per share.

From there, it was just a matter of simple math. I divided $7.16 by $11.44 and got 62.6%, and that’s the percentage that the ULTY ETF’s investors received in cash distributions over a one-year period. This makes the currently anticipated 90.82% distribution rate seem quite ambitious, but practically anything’s possible in the world of ultra-high-yield funds.

Share-Price Reduction Was a Problem

Still, it’s impressive that the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF delivered 62.6% worth of cash payouts over the past year. Don’t assume that the investors realized 62.6% worth of net profits, though.

For one thing, the share price of the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF was dragged down by the fund’s operating expenses. Specifically, the ULTY ETF automatically deducts 1.3% worth of operating expenses (after a fee waiver) per year from the share price.

Furthermore, there’s another factor that deepens the share-price erosion of the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF. The fund’s covered call option trading strategies enable ULTY’s large and frequent payouts, but those same strategies also tend to limit the ETF’s share-price upside potential.

Not only does the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF’s share price have limited upside movement, but it can actually decline in some circumstances. This issue helps to explain why the share price of the ULTY ETF declined 49.07% over a one-year period as of August 25, 2025.

UTLY’s Surprising Underperformance

Finally, we can apply some math to see how the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF really performed over the past 12 months. From $11.44 a year ago to $5.74 on the morning of August 25, 2025, the ULTY ETF lost $5.70 per share.

During that same time period, the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF’s investors received $7.16 worth of cash distributions. Therefore, the net gain was $7.16 – $5.70, or $1.46 per share.

Having bought the shares at $11.44 a year ago, a net gain of $1.46 per share would equate to a 12.8% return on one’s investment in the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF. That’s actually less than the S&P 500, which gained 16.09% during the past 12 months (and that doesn’t even include any dividends that S&P 500-tracking ETF holders may have collected).

The takeaway, then, is that the YieldMax Ultra Option Income Strategy ETF’s large, frequent payouts aren’t a promise of market-beating net returns. Nevertheless, risk-tolerant investors may choose to hold a few shares of the ULTY ETF as the tale of the next 12 months has yet to be written.

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