SCHD
Schwab US Dividend Equity ETF
stock NYSE ETF

This is a lame red herring.
OP, and anyone with an IQ above room temperature in finance, is saying that investors acquire wealth through more than with a hyperfixation on "income" characteristics. The automization of NAV distribution to the shareholder via excess cash paid as dividends or options contract premia is one of the largest growing subtle scams that wallstreet has capitalized on to rake in extra basis points in fees and expense ratios from suboptimal investors who have an emotional bias.
SCHD is glazed for its dividend growth history, yet investors in SCHD with drip enabled have ended up underweight to sectors and companies that are driving the equity risk premium, simply put, without a consummate reduction in volatility and likely not even a reduction in beta to the state variables which covary with their unique risk situation (where your labor income is from, for example) because SCHD is less diversified. SCHD would make more sense for a tech worker, simply because SCHD is heavily underweight tech.
Comparing any unlevered fund to a levered fund and saying "see look? You pussy, you only care about total returns but arent in UPRO?" An LETF position is inherently going short the risk free rate plus a spread and then adopting double or triple the beta of the underlying. Not even in the same universe as talking about agnostic total returns vs emotional income preference.

The stock market is cyclical, SCHD is not bad. Only now we are in the speculative cycle of the stock market and it does not benefit SCHD at all.

I just sold my SCHD for DIVO. Was seeing people recommend that as an alternative. Not sure it’s the best alternative but hoping it works out in about 10-15 years.

I’m not a huge fan of SCHD but I wouldn’t judge its performance on this year. It reallocated rather heavily into energy at the start of the year and it’s been a pretty lousy year for oil.

No I don't agree with that. In the picture the glazers aren't the ones saying that and I've taken the glazer position. Besides, yield and total return are kind of inseparable.
I think all the SCHD yield chasers have left the building since this has been a weak year. If I thought yield was all that matters I'd probably prefer YMAX or BDC's or CC's or something like that.

Same here. What makes so many people go crazy over SCHD? There are far better returns on other ETFs.

SCHD is trash, unless you are living off the dividends in retirement

Interesting write up. Are you familiar with the sharpe ratio? Your cagr/standard deviation of returns is very similar to what a sharpe ratio is calculating.
I have done backtesting of SCHd against VOO and VTI using portfolio visualizer using the past 10 years of data. SCHD did have a lower standard deviation compared to VOO and VTI but also lower cagr. It had the lowest sharpe ratio of the 3.

50%/50% SCHD/SCHG or 100%SCHG

Dividend funds tend to grow more slowly than other investments, but are considered safer.
* I reinvest my dividends and
* supplement the dividend income by selling options and
* using the extra options income to buy more shares to hold long,
thus further increasing my dividend payment.
I've done this with SCHD, VIG and TROW (which is an individual stock, not a fund, but I use the same strategy with it). It's not a huge boost, but it compounds over time and really adds up.
I made a video series about the SCHD trades that you can find online. I won't link it here because I don't want to get flagged, but the title is: SCHD stress-free options, earn $$$ with any outcome #1 | Cash Secured Put | Covered Call | Dividends, and my name is Patricia Saylor, Financial Fundamentals for Novice Investors.

🤔 the Kings ARE in SCHD...
Thats why I asked WHAT are your truely trying to accomplish?
You will make MASSIVELY more income and growth, holding the Kings, than you ever could with just Schd

I have VTI 75% SCHD 15% and VXUS 10%

It'll come down to risk tolerance and the amount of capital you have relative to the amount of income you want. I'm barreling towards retirement now and my portfolio has a 3% yield and an 11% organic growth rate (5yr). I consider this is very conservative despite being 90% equities and 10% bonds/cash. I could goose the yield by pulling in more BDCs and REITs but at the expense of growth. Key is to balance the income at 'just enough' with maximum growth potential.
I use a cash/bond buffer in which 3 years of income are in the buffer and the dividends and interest fill it in a lumpy way, but I draw cash every month at a fixed rate for living expenses as if it was a paycheck. Every year (on my wife's birthday) I'll adjust the withdrawal rate to reflect 1/36th of the value of the buffer. Given the growth rate that should get me an average of a 5-7% pay rise every year. Years following recessions likely to slow notably. As income grows faster than inflation adjustments I'll adjust the mix to have less of the higher yields and more growth.
No need for an emergency fund, that is what the giant portfolio and the buffer are for.
I am using SCHD/DGRO/SCHY/VYMI for my ETFs (plus a lot of individual stocks).

What would i personally change? Id sell everything except SCHD and put it in VOO. 
If you still want to pick stocks then maybe put 10-20% of your portfolio in a few you have high conviction in. Right now you're doing a lot of gambling which is fine but not how id approach long term wealth management. 

>I use a statistical technique that I use as the first step in me calculating a stock's or ETF's historical return and its historical volatility (i.e., "risk"). I call this method my statistical **"Risk versus Reward Technique"**.
That's nice, but you have tried to reinvent the wheel. There is already a broadly used statistic that looks at the **risk-adjusted** rate of return, called *alpha*.
This is the description of alpha from Charles Schwab:
>Alpha is a measure of fund performance **on a risk-adjusted basis**. Alpha compares the risk-adjusted performance of a fund to a benchmark index (such as the S&P 500). The excess return of the fund relative to the return of the benchmark index is a fund’s alpha. **A positive alpha means the fund has outperformed the index on a risk-adjusted basis.**
This is the description of alpha from Investopedia:
>Alpha (α) is an investing term that measures an investment strategy's ability to outperform the market, often called its "edge." It represents the excess or abnormal return of an investment compared to a benchmark index, **adjusted for risk**.
>A positive alpha indicates the investment beat the benchmark, **while a negative alpha means it underperformed.**
>[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/alpha.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/alpha.asp)
Soooo.....what *is* the alpha of SCHD? Is it positive, indicating **risk-adjusted** outperformance, or is it negative, indicating **risk-adjusted** underperformance?
Tap to reveal the answer:
>!The alpha of SCHD is **-7.76** (negative 7.76), meaning even when adjusted for risk SCHD underperformed.!<

You might consider a bit of DIY dividend portfolio investing, though that takes a bit of homework and is something of a project. But basically, long-term diversification is all...
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1hofu1z/building\_a\_dividend\_portfolio\_and\_the\_rule\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1hofu1z/building_a_dividend_portfolio_and_the_rule_of/)
One way to think about it is "Moneyball for Dividends." While the big funds (SCHD, JEPI, JEPQ, and others) are absolutely the right fit for a lot of people (set it and forget it), it's also kind of fun to put together your own team.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1nnwbj8/moneyball\_for\_dividends\_a\_way\_to\_think\_about/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1nnwbj8/moneyball_for_dividends_a_way_to_think_about/)
You might try some YieldMax for fun (people say bad things about YM, but some of their products actually have held water pretty well). Here's a breakdown of everything YieldMax offers in terms of yield + capital gain:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1nrggm3/yieldmax\_yield\_capital\_gain\_analysis\_9262025\_is/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1nrggm3/yieldmax_yield_capital_gain_analysis_9262025_is/)
And if you want weekly payers (though it's behind a paywall):
[https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1o0jrev/weekly\_payers\_yield\_capital\_gain\_analysis\_1062025/](https://www.reddit.com/r/dividendfarmer/comments/1o0jrev/weekly_payers_yield_capital_gain_analysis_1062025/)

SCHD

I don't like using ETFs like SCHD and I prefer to hold individual stocks instead but here is how I would invest it using ETFs:
30% VTI
30% SCHD (or better yet pick from schd but buy yourself)
15% PBDC (or better yet pick from PBDC but buy youself)
15% CLOZ
10% CLOX
That should give you a blended yield of 4.5-5% that will grow faster than inflation every year.
Note, this is not tax-efficient due to the 40% allocation to floating-rate credit, but if you are married with 3 kids on 1 income chances are high it won't result in a large tax bill.
Also note that BDCs are volatile - if you can't handle this put that allocation into CLOZ.
The CLOX position should be treated as "cash" and you can use that to rebalance when Mr. Market gives you the opportunity.

Not a bad reason to pass on it.
Couple of years ago I realized that taxes shouldn’t be a reason for why I don’t pick a stock or ETF I think will perform well. If it’s good, it’s good. Tax efficient or not. But I understand where you’re coming from.
I added FDVV to compliment my main SCHD holdings because:
- tech exposure
- strong utilities weighting
- minimal overlap w/ other holdings
Weights look like 50% SCHD, 20% LVHI, 10% FDVV (remaining 20% individual equities)

Are you in your accumulation phase? Then SCHD, like any other dividend fund, will underperform your broad market index funds.
You are completely misunderstanding the data, and missing the forest for the trees
https://testfol.io/?s=kSUSrhSPUe5
From 10/20/11 (SCHD’s inception date) to 10/14/25: starting value of $10k:
- SCHD ending balance: $50,158 (total return 401%).
- SCHB ending balance: $67,110 (571%).
You have less money with SCHD