Making Cents Sense

The seven mega-cap tech companies sometimes dubbed the “Magnificent Seven” (e.g., AAPL/Apple, MSFT/Microsoft, GOOGL/Alphabet, AMZN/Amazon, NVDA/Nvidia, META/Meta, TSLA/Tesla) have dominated headlines, returns and valuations in recent years. Given their influence, it’s no surprise fund issuers have rolled out ETFs to capture various angles of this theme — growth, leveraged, income/derivative overlays, etc. In this post I compare two specific ETFs: YMAG (YieldMax Magnificent 7 Fund of Option Income ETFs) MAGY (Roundhill Magnificent Seven Covered Call ETF) I’ll walk through their structures, strategies, yields, risk profiles, tax/structural considerations, and conclude by making the case for which is the better long-term hold (and why the other may still serve a purpose). Note: This is not investment advice; please do your due diligence. What the Two Funds Are (At a High Level) YMAG YMAG is offered by the YieldMax™ group (issued by Tidal Financial Group), under the “Mag...

If there’s such a thing as “dividend Zen,” then PLTY is the ETF that gets you about as close as humanly possible before nirvana turns taxable. The yield is sweet, the drawdown protection is practical, and the mechanics are delightfully transparent. It’s not perfect—no covered call strategy ever is—but in a world where most yield products feel like traps dressed as treasures, PLTY is the rare fund that actually understands its audience: investors who want income without feeling like they sold their portfolio’s soul to the devil of underperformance. The Basics: What PLTY Actually Is PLTY—officially the Putnam Large Cap Value ETF with BuyWrite Strategy —is a covered call ETF built around a core portfolio of high-quality, large-cap U.S. equities. Think of it as a disciplined, yield-focused portfolio that gets paid to rent out upside potential every month. Its structure is elegantly simple: Owns blue-chip equities —companies like Microsoft, JPMorgan, Johnson & Johnson, and oth...

Introduction: The Mirage of “New and Improved” In every market cycle, there’s always a new investment darling — a ticker that whispers promises of higher yield, smarter strategy, and smoother returns. The crowd gathers, analysts chatter, and everyone suddenly claims they “always liked it” the moment the price ticks upward. Right now, that darling happens to be FDVV , the Fidelity High Dividend ETF . It’s marketed as a dividend growth investor’s dream: a basket of high-quality, high-yielding U.S. stocks, curated for income, stability, and growth. But investors should ask the question most people avoid when excitement enters the room: “Compared to what?” The illusion of progress often hides the same old risks, just dressed in new branding. If you want to know whether FDVV is a rising star or a risky bet, you have to strip away the marketing, the sentiment, and the noise — and look at what actually compounds value over time. Section 1: The Allure of Dividends — and the Misunderstan...