Wall Street Now Sells 11 Weekly-Pay ETFs. Only Three Have Beaten the S&P. Here They Are

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (NYSEARCA:SPY) is the default core holding for millions of investors, and it earns that spot by giving you the entire S&P 500 for almost nothing. Its weak spot is income. SPY pays a small dividend four times a year, and that gap has fed a wave of weekly-pay ETFs that promise a deposit every Friday. We tracked 11 of these funds, and only three beat SPY on total return over the past year. The best of them, Roundhill Nasdaq-100 0DTE Covered Call Strategy ETF (CBOE:QDTE), outperformed for a reason most investors overlook.

Why SPY Keeps Its Spot at the Core

SPY charges 0.0945% a year, according to State Street’s March 17, 2026 fact sheet. That works out to $9.45 on every $10,000. You also get automatic exposure to AI leaders, with NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) alone making up 7.58% of the fund. The drawback is the payout. SPY’s September dividend came to $1.8888 per share on a share price near $764.30, so anyone living off SPY has to sell shares to cover their bills.

How Weekly-Pay Funds Build the Paycheck

Roundhill says QDTE holds overnight exposure to the Nasdaq-100 and sells out-of-the-money 0DTE calls on the index each morning. “0DTE” means the options expire the same day they are sold. The fund’s June 30 filing shows four Nasdaq-100 call positions making up most of its $937 million in net assets. The option premiums pay for the weekly distributions, which gave QDTE a distribution rate of about 24% as of August.

Three Funds That Actually Beat SPY

SPY’s one-year figure is measured from September 26, 2025, with dividends reinvested. Over that period, $10,000 in QDTE grew to $12,241, compared with $11,673 in SPY. That is a 5.68 percentage point lead. QDTE also leads SPY this year by 4.05 points. The Roundhill Russell 2000 0DTE Covered Call Strategy ETF (CBOE:RDTE) beat SPY by only 0.32 points over the year. The Roundhill GOOGL WeeklyPay ETF (CBOE:GOOW) targets 120% of Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s weekly return. It won big over the year but trails SPY in 2026.

Why the S&P 500 Version Fell Behind

The Roundhill S&P 500 0DTE Covered Call Strategy ETF (CBOE:XDTE) runs the same strategy on SPY’s own index and returned 15.34%. That trailed SPY by 1.39 points. Selling calls every day caps gains on the market’s best days, and the higher fee widens the gap. QDTE’s win came from owning the Nasdaq-100, which outperformed the S&P 500, while the weekly structure itself added nothing on top.

The funds that lost show the downside. As of August, COIW fell 55%, PLTW 39%, YETH 38%, and TSLW 20%. The Bitcoin (CRYPTO:BTC)-linked YBTC is down 33.13% over the past year.

Fees, Taxes and Payout Swings to Weigh First

QDTE’s fee runs about 10 times SPY’s, or $96 a year per $10,000. Roundhill warns that distributions may exceed the fund’s income, with the excess treated as return of capital. Return of capital lowers your cost basis and pushes taxes out to the day you sell. The payouts also swing: QDTE paid $0.072719 on February 5 and $0.269995 two weeks later. In a taxable account, selling SPY to fund a switch can trigger capital gains.

A Practical Way to Add Weekly Income

Using an IRA is the cleanest move, since selling SPY creates no tax bill. One approach is moving only the piece needed for income into QDTE while keeping SPY as the growth core (the mix, the payment calendar, and the withdrawal order are all laid out in our free Paycheck Portfolio Method guide).

Keep SPY as the Core and Test QDTE for Income

For income seekers who are comfortable with a tech-heavy portfolio, QDTE has earned a look, and its one-year lead is real. A partial move fits most investors better than a full trade. If the Nasdaq-100 starts lagging the S&P 500, or QDTE’s distributions keep shrinking, the case for switching weakens fast. Investors who don’t need weekly income give up little by staying with SPY.

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