- Pays: weekly (it paid monthly until late 2025, when YieldMax moved it to weekly payouts).
- First paid: April 2024, shortly after the fund launched.
- What it is: an option-income fund — it sells call options on Strategy (ticker MSTR), the bitcoin-holding company, and pays out the option fees it collects.
- Payout pattern: the amounts vary a lot from payment to payment and have declined substantially since the fund's early months — that's normal for this type of fund, not a malfunction.
- Headline yield: often advertised at well over 50% a year — but see the total-return box below before taking that at face value.
MSTY makes no promise to pay any particular amount; each payout depends on the option income earned that period.
MSTY pays weekly (monthly before late 2025). Each point below is a single distribution. The amounts are far from steady — you can see the big early payouts and the long slide since. The table further down totals every year.
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Each point is one payment; the line ends at the most recent payout. The table below totals them by year.
A real total-return estimate, assuming every payout was reinvested — including what happened to the share price. Before taxes and fees. Past performance does not predict the future.
MSTY's checks are real, but they are not dividends the way Coca-Cola pays dividends. No company is sharing profits with you. The fund is selling away the upside of one of the wildest stocks in America — Strategy (MSTR), effectively a leveraged bitcoin bet — and handing you the fee. When bitcoin mania cools, the fee shrinks. And because the fund keeps most of MSTR's downside, its own share price grinds lower, which shrinks every future payout too. Part of many payments is also "return of capital" — a slice of your own money coming back.
So ignore the advertised yield and look at one number instead: total return — payouts plus what your shares are now worth. The "What If You'd Invested?" box above calculates it from real prices, and for MSTY the answer has often been sobering. The plain-English mechanics are in our guide, What Are YieldMax ETFs?
| Year | Total Distributions / Share | Payments | Change vs Prior Year |
|---|
Data source: Yahoo Finance. Figures are per share; the current year may be partial and figures should be verified against official sources. Figures reflect any share-split adjustments made by the data source.
Calculated from complete calendar years in the data above. Past results don't guarantee future payments.
What MSTY's Payout Chart Really Shows
MSTY — the YieldMax MSTR Option Income Strategy ETF — is one of the most-searched income funds in America, and the chart above shows why people can't look away. Since its first payout in April 2024, it has paid out enormous amounts relative to its share price, first monthly and, since late 2025, weekly. It's tied to Strategy (ticker MSTR) — the company famous for holding billions of dollars of bitcoin — which makes it, in plain terms, an income product built on top of one of the most volatile stocks on the market.
The chart also shows the part the yield ads don't: the payouts started huge and have slid steadily downward. That isn't a scandal — it's how the product works. The distributions come from selling options, option income shrinks when volatility cools or the fund's own price falls, and both have happened. Anyone researching "MSTY dividend history" deserves to see the slide as clearly as the spikes.
How Often Does MSTY Pay?
Weekly — every Thursday in normal weeks. MSTY paid monthly from April 2024 until late 2025, when YieldMax switched it and several sister funds to weekly distributions. Note the vocabulary: these are distributions, not dividends. No company profit is being shared with you; the fund is passing along option fees (and sometimes a slice of your own capital).
Why Is the Yield So High — and Why Did the Payout Drop?
Both questions have the same answer: volatility. MSTY sells call options on MSTR, and option buyers pay more for volatile stocks — MSTR, effectively a leveraged bet on bitcoin, is about as volatile as big stocks get. That's the high yield. But option income isn't a salary. When MSTR's volatility cools, the fees shrink. When the fund's share price (NAV) erodes — which happens because it keeps most of MSTR's downside while selling away most of the upside — every future payout is earned on a smaller base. Result: the distribution per share has fallen substantially from its early peaks, exactly what the chart above shows.
Is MSTY's Payout Safe?
No payout is guaranteed, and MSTY doesn't even target a fixed amount — each distribution is whatever the strategy earned that period. Concentration in a single bitcoin-linked stock means both the share price and the income can drop sharply at the same time. The honest way to judge a fund like this is total return: payouts plus share-price change, which the "What If You'd Invested?" box above computes from real data. If you want the full plain-English breakdown of how these funds work — including return of capital and NAV erosion — read What Are YieldMax ETFs? You can also compare MSTY with its sister funds TSLY, CONY, and ULTY, or with steadier income funds like JEPI and SCHD.
Before You Chase the Yield
Ten minutes with our plain-English YieldMax guide — option income, return of capital, NAV erosion — will save you from the most expensive surprises.
Read: What Are YieldMax ETFs?