SPYI
NEOS S&P 500 High Income ETF
stock BATS ETF

Yes a lot of people are making money in the US stock market. I am currently retired and living off of my dividned income currently at 5K a month. Now it is important to note I am not selling any shares to generate this income. Dividend are profit sharing cash payment to share holders. Dividend are a continuous stream of income that likely will last for decades or the rest of my life. I am 55 and moving fund to my roth for more income after age 60 I should have about a bit over 10Ka month of income at age 60.
Many young invests are putting a lot of money into growth funds right now lite VOO and VTI, or VT. But theses funds don't pay much of a dividned (About 1%) These fund rely on share price growth. So you have to sell shares to generate income. And when you run out of shareSos you have no income. Currently we hare in a Bull market and growth does best in this market.
Dividend in contrast do best in a bear market. Growth can be hard to find in bear market. Dividend funds I am invested in are BTCI, QQQI, SPYI, EIC, PFLT, ARDC, EMO, PBDC, CLOZ, UTF, UTG , JAAA.

4% used to be seen as the gold standard of HYSA.
Now, 4% is incredibly safe.
The new conservative is 12% in the forms of SPYI and QQQI.
If you have a moderate risk profile plenty of Roundhill funds target between 20-40% and they are doing well.

GPIQ, QQQI to follow Nasdaq. GPIX, SPYI to follow S&P 500. both give monthly dividends. they follow rule 1256 so 60/40 split as to how dividends being taxed . This makes them tax favorable. If in your ROTH account you could put JEPQ, JEPI.

As kind of a year-end evaluation of my income portfolio, yesterday I sat down and worked out the NAV, dividend, and total returns of the funds I'm currently in. Here's the data, sorted by total return:
https://preview.redd.it/hvhh3nzfat5g1.png?width=792&format=png&auto=webp&s=020eba0b8fdd1c1076d2355ed94d6250e9deda24
The "$ 1yr dividends" column is not the current dividend times 12, it's the actual dividends the fund paid out over the last year. Total return is based on this, not on the current dividend. Current dividend info is just there for my reference. I have a goal of averaging 10% paid out monthly, I'm retired and it's part of my monthly cash flow.
I didn't own all of these for the full 12 month period, but I wanted to see how the funds I own performed relative to each other.
I was surprised by both the first and last place finishers. AOD isn't discussed much here and yet it's been the best, with a very strong NAV and current dividend yield and total return. Fortunately I've been in it for almost the entire time so I got to see the bulk of those gains.
SPYI is mentioned frequently and yet it ended up in last place. I haven't been in it very long, but I'm above water on NAV and got a few months of solid dividend payouts, so it's worked out for me.
Based on this data, I'm probably going to rotate out of the bottom three (JEPQ & BDJ & SPYI) and find a new home for that money. Yeah, I know, past performance doesn't necessarily indicate and all that stuff. But it tells me something about how the fund is run.
Basically what I want is the best NAV growth I can get on a portfolio that collectively delivers me about 10% income, paid out monthly. Suggestions for other funds that meet this criteria?
On my radar at the moment is QDVO. Here's how the above works out for it:
https://preview.redd.it/zftnfut4ct5g1.png?width=792&format=png&auto=webp&s=0bed102384b70ed4b6e259d84324ab850bb3a88f

Here's the problem. On average, the market has grown by about 10% per year. That includes dividends and capital gains. But also, inflation is about 3% on average. So that results in a 7% effective return rate.
That 7% effective return also assumes 100% in equities. That's fine when wealth-building, but when retired, wealth-preservation and income is the goal, so being 100% equities isn't the best portfolio, a 20-40% fixed income position (depending on life expectancy) is an important part to ride out equity drawdowns. This fixed income position lowers that 7% effective return to closer to the 5% range (8% total minus 3% inflation).
The problem with going all equities and a high dividend/withdrawal rate is that it works in good times, then terribly fails in bad times. Looking at the last 15 years, it totally seems that a high dividend yield without NAV erosion is totally possible. But (for example) from 2000-2009, it would be catastrophic.
I can never get behind individual stocks. Too much exposure to one company. Sure, O or MAIN could be doing well, but what happens in 5 or 10 years? I totally can get behind derivitive income funds like DIVO, IDVO, GPIX, SPYI, BALI, but only as a subset of a portfolio.
I'm 56 and retired. I would select a mixed portfolio of ETFs. 75% equities (20% international), 25% fixed income. The 25% of derivative income funds is split between several, because each had a slightly different strategy.
* 20% DGRO
* 20% FDVV
* 10% VYMI
* 5% SPYI
* 5% GPIX
* 5% DIVO
* 5% BALI
* 5% IDVO
* 5% BINC
* 5% FBND
* 5% VCIT
* 5% USHY
* 5% SGOV

Looks great! I have those plus QQQI, SPYI, IAUI. You can always just monitor things and scale out of the ones that are underperforming

From what I can tell, DIVO, SPYI, and QQQI are all in the $5-7B AUM range. IDVO is an outlier at $0.5B

You can't go wrong having diverse managers. This is my goal as well.
SPYI would make a nice addition. I own the JEPs, SPYI, QQQI, and BITO. DIVOs low AUM in contrast to SPYI and QQQI concerns me, considering assets are similar and DIVO has closer to a decade head start over NEOS.

These comments are so unhelpful, I'll answer OP. Id continue adding to my current holdings of O, SPYI, SGOV and SCHD. Consistent div growth is what I like.

Build a 3-5 year cash/Treasury bucket and simplify the equity sleeve; don’t lean on covered-call yields alone for lifetime income.
Your 80% equity mix with SCHD, VYM, JEPI, SPYI is heavy on overlap and caps upside; I’d pick one of SCHD or VYM, keep a broad core like VTI/VOO, and cap JEPI+SPYI at 10% total since payouts swing. In an IRA, dividends vs selling shares is the same after tax, so set a flexible 3.5-4% spend and let total return drive it. Park 2 years of spends in T-bills or VUSXX, next 3 years in a Treasury or TIPS ladder; automate a monthly transfer and refill from equities after good years. Consider swapping most of GLD to TIPS for inflation protection, or keep gold to 5% max. At 65-70, price a small SPIA to cover essentials if you want less sequence risk; otherwise push fixed income toward 35-45% for smoother rides. Rebalance at 5% bands and plan for a 40% drawdown without selling.
I’ve used Vanguard brokered CDs and Blueprint Income to shop MYGAs; Gainbridge offered a simple fixed-rate slice I used to lock part of years 1-5 cash needs.
Bottom line: lock 3-5 years in safe assets, keep the rest broad and simple, and run a 3.5-4% spend instead of chasing yield.

I am nearing retirement and took a similar route with QQQI. Recently began to diversify. QQQI+SPYI >65% / NIHI+BTCI>15% / ARCC+PFFA+CEFS+$$$>20%. Dividends reserved for new. All in GPIQ is gutsy and wish you the best.

$QQQi is not limited from capital appreciation. It went up from $41 to $55 now. Granted $QQQ did better, but how many shares can you buy in the $400 range versus $41? $QQQI and $SPYI is for the retail investor, who doesn’t have high six figures to get a decent amount of shares, which I consider 1000 is a good start for any one position to make some serious coin!

I disagree. $SPYI and $QQQI recovered nicely from April lows. Why own $SPY or $QQQ when you can get a much greater dividend yield and get more for your money when these ETFs perform similarly to the indexes?

Helpful QQQI/SPYI tips for ROC and Cost Basis

That's one thing that confuses me. I've looked into a lot of income focused stocks and etfs from armchair incomes YouTube channel. ARCC has cut it's dividend one time in 2008 and grown in value since its inception (but when it dips it dips deep). HTGC and MAIN have also grown while paying out high dividends. I realize these are BDCs which come with different risks, but it seems possible right? DIVO and IDVO are slightly lower distributions but amazing returns overall.
6.8% produces the amount she wants based on her current savings and desired monthly income, with a safety buffer. While she could survive off yields ~4%, we'd rather take the chance with some stuff like SPYI. Even if the s&p500 drops 30% and her distributions drop with it, the total yield on cost should still be higher than just investing in bonds and t bills.

SCHG/SCHD 50/50 split. or divide the $400k equally into SCHD, DGRO, SPYI, QQQI. Or follow Professor G's YT video on retiring with $500k. Just scale it to $400k ?

ET and SPYI are two of my favorites that I hold, but I have others but that’s my two favorites

QQQI , IWMI, SPYI,ISPY, JEPI, JEPQ ,VZ . Neos website is what you need to explore. I have all of those.

I am interested in covered-call ETF’s like QQQI/SPYI that distribute a large portion of their payouts as Return of Capital. I’m trying to confirm how Fidelity handles the tax reporting.
My questions are:

1. Does Fidelity automatically reduce cost basis for ROC each year when the fund’s final tax classification (1099-DIV) is released?
In other words, will Fidelity update my cost basis annually based on the ROC reported in Box 3, or do I need to track this myself?

2. What happens when cost basis reaches zero?
Under IRS rules, any ROC after basis hits zero should be taxable as capital gains.
Does Fidelity automatically classify those post-zero-basis distributions as capital gains, or will they continue to show them as non-taxable ROC?
I use TurboTax and rely on importing Fidelity’s tax documents, so I want to understand whether Fidelity will report these items correctly or if I’ll have to manually adjust in future years.
Thanks!

It all depends on your goals.
If you are young below 30 then DCA into growth ETF like VOO, SPMO, QQQM,SCHG or max out Roth IRA.
If your around 50 then split investment into growth etf and dividend etfs like SPYI,QQQI, JEPQ,GPIQ so slowly before retirement you can generate passive income stream.