ETFs Yielding 20% or More in 2026

• Most funds in this range are single-stock options-strategy ETFs whose NAV trends downward over multi-year horizons.
• Distribution rates can drop sharply when implied volatility on the underlying compresses — yields are not stable.
• Total-return frequently lags the underlying stock by a wide margin once options premia and ER are netted out.
• Liquidity in some sub-$50M AUM funds widens bid-ask spreads, raising the round-trip cost of rebalancing.

Funds yielding 20% and above are almost exclusively options-income strategies—primarily single-stock covered call and synthetic-position ETFs that harvest premium from high-volatility underlying names like MSTR, RIOT, MARA, and PLTR. The dominant issuers, GraniteShares, YieldMax, Roundhill Investments, and REX Shares, have built entire product suites around weekly options overwriting on volatile equities, which explains why "Weekly" distributions dominate the frequency list alongside monthly, biweekly, and semi-monthly schedules. The presence of Volatility Shares and Grayscale Investments also points to leveraged and crypto-adjacent exposures feeding into this yield tier.

• The average yield across all 187 funds in this range is 42.97%, but the top 10 shown here cluster much higher, from 78.29% (CWY) to 98.54% (RTYY), suggesting a wide dispersion beneath the headline average.
• Expense ratios in the top 10 are tightly banded between 1.00% and 1.07%, indicating options-income strategies in this range carry fairly uniform cost structures regardless of yield level.
• AUM varies enormously among top-yield funds, from MSTY at $1.0B down to HMYY at just $880,458, showing that extreme headline yields appear in both large and very small funds.
• Single-stock exposure is a clear pattern in the top 10 here, with GraniteShares alone contributing five of the ten highest-yielding funds shown, each tied to a specific volatile underlying stock.
• The average expense ratio for the full 187-fund range (1.00%) matches several individual top-10 funds, suggesting cost levels are consistent even as yields vary dramatically.

Risk considerations in this yield range are substantial. First, these yields are largely generated through options premium income rather than traditional earnings or interest, meaning high headline yields can coincide with NAV erosion over time as premiums fail to offset underlying price declines. Second, distributions may include significant return-of-capital, which can reduce an investor's cost basis and isn't necessarily a sign of sustainable income. Third, the covered-call structure typically caps upside participation in the underlying stock, so investors may miss rallies in names like MSTR or RIOT while still bearing