NEOS Nasdaq 100 High Income ETF

QQQI

Market cap $12.8B

With the ceasefire with Iran supposedly going permanent, the market is facing a fork in the road.

Building resilient portfolios in markets delivering mixed messages can be a challenging affair. In our ongoing engagement with the retail and advisor community at VettaFi, we hear first-hand just how investors are tackling that challenge this year.

Concentration risk is a growing pain point for portfolios globally. A recent Morningstar study shows that this trend is driven by the unprecedented scale of capital expenditures on artificial intelligence (AI) by tech leaders.

NEOS Nasdaq-100 High-Income ETF offers a stable NAV, high monthly income, and tracks the Nasdaq-100 with a 14.11% distribution rate. QQQI is best suited for income-focused investors in the consumption phase, while QQQ remains superior for pure growth during accumulation years. QQQI demonstrates a strong correlation (0.78) with the Nasdaq-100, avoiding NAV erosion seen in high-yield competitors like QQQY.

Covered call ETFs offer abnormal income and access to asset classes lacking yield, though downside protection is rarely effective in practice. Alpha generation is not the goal; these funds suit investors prioritizing high income or absolute return over chasing alpha. However, not all covered call ETFs can do this job.

At this market stage, risk-reward dynamics are unfavorable for new risk exposure. This means that growth-biased equities and aggressive credit risk positions might not be the areas where to put prudent capital. In this article, I share two 9%+ monthly-yield picks that have become quite attractive in the current market setting.

Three options-overlay ETFs are quietly paying double-digit annual distribution rates on a monthly (or weekly) schedule, and most income investors have never touched them.

The Dividend Harvesting Portfolio achieved a 42.41% return on invested capital, now yielding $3,037 in forward annualized dividends (7.78% yield, 11.08% yield on cost). I continue to add to rate-sensitive assets like Realty Income (O) and QQQI, expecting a favorable rate environment and market upside toward S&P 8,000 in 2026. Portfolio diversification remains a priority, with individual equities at 40.12% and a focus on increasing energy sector exposure for future growth.

Value-oriented, high-yield assets can serve as a shelter against potential drawdown risks in the richly priced large-cap growth arena. The trick is to find the highest-yielding opportunities possible without taking on the income reduction and NAV decay risks.

The NEOS Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF (NASDAQ:QQQI) has grown to roughly $9.4 billion in assets in just over two years.