Measuring 12 months of payments and prices across all tracked funds…
Trailing 12 months, per share, split-adjusted. "Paid" is distributions as a percent of the share price 12 months ago; "share price" is the raw price change (the erosion measure); "total return" assumes distributions were reinvested. Funds need a year of price history to be ranked.
Writers and researchers: these figures are free to cite with a link to this page. They recompute from live data on every load — current as of today, not a stale snapshot.
🔴 heavy erosion (share price down 20%+ in 12 months) · 🟡 eroding (down 5–20%) · 🟢 held value. A fund can erode and still show a positive total return — both columns matter.
| Fund | Paid (12 mo) | Share Price (12 mo) | Total Return | Verdict |
|---|
Click any ticker for its full payment history. Total return is price change plus reinvested distributions, before taxes and fees — past results don't predict the future.
Sustained erosion eventually pushes a share price low enough that the fund reverse-splits to make it look normal again. Funds trading under ~$8 are on watch; under ~$5 is the classic trigger zone. A past reverse split means it has already happened once.
| Fund | Share Price | Past Reverse Splits | Zone |
|---|
A reverse split doesn't change your dollar value on the day it happens — it's a symptom, not a penalty. But it's the market's way of saying the erosion has been going on a while.
How to Read This Honestly
The index isn't an attack on high-yield funds — some of the biggest payers on it hold their value just fine, and a red row can still have delivered a positive total return. The point is the trade: when a fund pays 60% while its share price falls 40%, the real income was the difference, not the headline. Erosion also compounds quietly — a smaller share price means smaller future checks from the same strategy, which is why the highest trailing yields so often belong to funds whose checks are already shrinking (we measure that separately on the payout statistics page).
The mechanics behind all of this — how a fund can send you real cash that's partly your own principal, and how to tell tax-smart return of capital from the destructive kind — are explained in plain English in Return of Capital & NAV Erosion. And if you own one of these funds, the House Money Calculator Payout Impact Calculator Cost Basis Calculator Crash Simulator shows what your position has actually returned — distributions plus today's share value, against what you put in.
Check Your Own Fund's Full Story
Every payment ever made, charted live — plus the next expected ex-dividend date.
Browse All Payment Histories