Version 1.1 · locked

The rules, on one page

The goal is to protect NAV. NAV is the dollar value of the shares. The rule is always 50/50 MSTY and WNTR. This is the public recipe the rest of the site follows.

Pure Max Income is an old comparison only. That older rule put everything in whichever fund had paid more lately.

What these funds are

MSTY is YieldMax’s MSTR option-income fund that leans long (it tends to rise when MSTR rises). It started on 2024-02-22. WNTR is the short twin (it tends to rise when MSTR falls). It started on 2025-03-27. An option is a contract the fund sells for a fee. Both switched to weekly payouts with the YieldMax-wide change. They are in Group 2: announced Wednesday, you must own them by Thursday, and the cash is paid Friday. The first weekly Thursday was 2025-10-16.

The payouts are often return of capital (ROC). ROC means part of the cash is your own money coming back, so the share price can fall. Yahoo does not reliably split ROC from ordinary income in the public fields used here. Treat yield as the cash payout rate, not profit. A 50/50 mix lowers the chance that the long side and the short side run far apart. It does not stop the share price from falling over time.

Announcement: YieldMax switch to weekly payouts. MSTY had a 1-for-5 reverse split on 2025-12-08. Five old shares became one new share, so the price looks higher. The charts use prices adjusted for that split.

Locked rules

Name

Max NAV preservation (50/50)

Main goal

Keep drops in share value small, including how long they last (the Ulcer score), and protect the high-water value.

Formula

Always 50% MSTY and 50% WNTR. Never put 100% in the fund that paid more. Never flip the whole book to chase yield.

Second goal

Collect the weekly cash from both funds. Income is shown. It is not the thing we try to maximize.

Risk limit

None for choosing the mix. The 50/50 leftover MSTR dollar delta is shown only. Dollar delta is the modeled dollar exposure to MSTR.

Rebalance

Each week, on the payout day: put 100% of the cash back in, and put the mix back to 50/50. Rebalance means restore that split.

Tracking start

Oct 16, 2025 (the first weekly payout date for both funds)

Sample window end

Sep 17, 2026

$50k example

Allocator snapshot Sep 20, 2026, America/Denver. Equal dollars in MSTY and WNTR, even when one fund’s recent one-month payout rate is higher.

MSTY

~1,517 sh · $25,000 · 50%

WNTR

~1,582 sh · $25,000 · 50%

Expected ~1-month income

$3,951 recent one-month pace (an estimate, not a promise)

Modeled MSTR-$

+5.7% of NAV · shown only. It does not change the mix.

What version 1.1 leaves out

Pure Max Income put 100% in the fund with the higher recent one-month payout, and flipped the whole book each week. It is an old comparison. In this sample it shows -53.74% total return and -63.67% max drawdown. The 50/50 book ended at $49,441. Total return is the percent gain or loss. Max drawdown is the biggest fall from a high. A harvest tilt of ±10 percentage points, a 40% floor, and a beta-flat mix remain as extra choices in the share calculator file today_50k_allocations.csv. Their older test numbers used a price method we pulled back, so those numbers are not shown again. The public track is the 50/50 recipe.