QQQI’s 14 Percent Yield Was 98 Percent Return of Capital in a Recent Distribution, And That’s the Real Story
Key takeaways
- The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and NEOS Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF wasn t one of them.
- The NEOS Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF (NASDAQ:QQQI) paid out $0.6589 per share on May 22, 2026, the latest in a steady run of monthly checks that produce a headline distribution rate near 14%.
- Let s take a look into how all of this works.
QQQI’s 14 Percent Yield Was 98 Percent Return of Capital in a Recent Distribution, And That’s the Real Story kody_king / Shutterstock.com Omor Ibne Ehsan Mon, May 25, 2026 at 7:20 PM GMT+7 5 min read NVDA QQQI JEPQ AAPL MSFT Quick Read NEOS Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF (QQQI) delivers a headline 14% distribution rate but recent monthly payouts were classified as 98% return of capital, meaning investors receive their own money back rather than true income, which defers tax bills and lowers cost basis. The fund holds mega-caps like NVIDIA (8.6%), Apple (7.1%), and Microsoft (5.5%), then sells call options to harvest premium, but this strategy underperformed QQQ by 6 percentage points over the past year and caps upside during strong market rallies.
QQQI’s call-writing overlay produces optically high yields by deploying return-of-capital distributions, but this approach only makes sense for taxable-account retirees who hold long enough for basis math to work in their favor and can tolerate capped upside; JPMorgan’s JEPQ offers similar coverage-call exposure at half the expense ratio with more straightforward tax treatment.
The analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 just named his top 10 stocks and NEOS Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF wasn t one of them. Get them here FREE.