YieldMax has a number of ETFs, in which they are generally long synthetic stock (long call, short put with the same terms) and then they sell call credit spreads, out-of-the-money against that synthetic stock. Credit balances are invested in T-Bills (or equivalent) and dividends are paid monthly. We looked at MSTY, CONY, NVDY, and TSLY, which have as their underlyings MSTR, COIN, NVDA, and TSLA, respectively. Our conclusion was that these are attractive approaches to a taxable income stream as long as you have faith in the underlying – which is Bitcoin in the cases of MSTR and COIN.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of speaking to students in the UCLA MQE program on the topic of Understanding and Trading Volatility Derivatives. It was a data-driven, practical lecture covering the VIX, volatility ETNs, and trading strategies tied to volatility structures.
After the session, I assigned a set of homework questions to reinforce key concepts — the kind of material that goes beyond theory and gets at how volatility products behave in real-world markets.
Join Larry McMillan as he discusses the current state of the stock market on June 2, 2025.
At McMillan Analysis, our approach to selling naked puts is grounded in data, probability, and risk management—not gut feelings or "favorite" stocks. Each trading day, we apply a rigorous screening process to identify the highest-quality put-write candidates, designed to strive for consistent returns while minimizing downside risk.
Some companies typically make a large gap move after earnings are reported. Large post-earnings moves are caused by the fact that – for some companies – it is difficult for analysts to accurately forecast the earnings. Historically, NVDA has been one of many such companies.
The broad market continued to rally through May 20th -- even shrugging off a downgrade of US debt over the weekend. But on Wednesday (May 21st), a poorly received US Bond auction finally sent the market spiraling downward 100 points. That was enough to generate some sell signals.
We have run a couple of articles about the various covered writing ETFs, most of them listed at Yieldmax.com. We reviewed CONY, MSTY, NVDY, and TSLY, which are covered writing ETFs based on COIN, MSTR, NVDA, and TSLA, respectively. They are generally interesting, and it you like the underlying they are worth owning in your portfolio. For the purposes of this article, we are going to refer to these ETFs as the “standard” ETFs.
Stocks have continued to rally, after last weekend's positive tariff meeting between the U.S. and China. $SPX gapped higher on Monday, blasting right through former resistance at 5700 and 5800, and thus establishing a new bullish pattern on its chart.
The market has shown impressive strength recently, with $SPX closing above the key 5800 level. That move alone adds to the bullish tone, but the real question now is: Could this be the start of a push to new all-time highs?
There’s one indicator that might offer a clue — Cumulative Volume Breadth (CVB).
