The 13 strategies, and how each one is built

All 13, side by side

Annualised return, gross and after Italian taxes with and without offsetting realised losses; deepest fall from a previous peak; income per €10,000 a month before tax; number of funds held today. The benchmark is a distributing S&P 500 ETF over each strategy's own period.

Annualised returns, gross and net of the Italian 26% withholding, with and without offsetting realised losses; drawdown and income before tax; the benchmark is a distributing S&P 500 ETF (VUSA) over its own period, and each strategy is compared with it on its own page over the same months. Updated to 30 September 2026. Simulated backtests, not real accounts.

Read the last two columns together with the first. The strategies that pay most — €483, €465, €342 — are also the ones that lose most to tax and fall hardest. 4 strategies keep pace with the index after tax: the one that does it with the least income pays €19 a month , the one that does it with the most pays €483 — and carries a -27% drawdown for it. There is no row that is best at everything, and if there were we would distrust it. The table is read from the engine's results, so it updates with every monthly run.

The machinery, in plain words

Every strategy is made of sleeves. A sleeve says: from which part of the universe funds may be chosen, how many to hold, how to rank them, and how much money goes into each. A strategy is one or more sleeves plus a rule for what happens to the income.

How funds are chosen

A sleeve either holds a fixed list of ISINs — used for the index core of Core Plus and its siblings — or ranks the eligible funds each month and keeps the top N. The ranking criteria in use are:

• Quality ScoreOur composite: how much of the distribution is covered, how stable the payments are, price behaviour and cost. The default for most sleeves.
• Sustainable IncomeCoverage first: distributions of the last twelve months against the total return actually produced. Used by the sleeve of the same name and by the three index-core strategies.
• Dividend growthThe compound growth of the amount paid. Selects funds whose payments are rising rather than the ones paying most today.
• YieldPlain distribution yield. Included for comparison more than for use: on its own it selects the funds closest to returning capital.
• MomentumThree of the five signals from the recovery screener, the ones reconstructible from closing prices. Used only in experiments.

When a fund leaves

Rotation costs money — two commissions and a realised gain — so the exit rules are deliberately reluctant. A fund leaves when it falls out of the top N of its own sleeve, but only after a minimum holding period of three to six months, and only once it has dropped below the rank by a buffer of two to four places. Without the buffer a portfolio churns on differences of a hundredth of a point.

The published strategies rotate between zero and eleven times over three years. Anything above twenty we treat as a warning sign rather than a feature.

What happens to the income

Three modes, chosen on each strategy page. Pay out 100%: everything arrives as cash. Pay out 50%: half is reinvested into the funds with the highest current yield, half is paid. Reinvest 100%: nothing is paid, everything compounds. The figures in the table above use pay-out 50%.

Costs and taxes

Every trade is charged at the commission in your profile. Distributions are taxed when paid, gains when a position is sold, and the yearly wealth tax is applied to the portfolio value. The offsetting of realised losses, where the instruments allow it, is a toggle on each strategy page.

The four families

Index core with an income sleeve — Core Plus, Tech Income, Growth Income

An S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 core of 70–85%, with the rest in option-income funds selected for coverage. These are the three that match or beat the index after tax, and the honest reading is that the core does the work: they are index portfolios with an income sleeve, not income portfolios that beat the index. What the sleeve adds is three to four times the cash — and, against intuition, a slightly smaller drawdown than the index itself.

Low-volatility income — Euro Income, Income Conservative, Sustainable Income, Core Seven

Mixed categories, a small option sleeve of 20–40%, and in the case of Euro Income a single currency. They give up four to six points of return against the index and cut the drawdown to between −6% and −11%, while paying four to eighteen times what the index pays. For most people this family is the sensible answer, and it is why the strategy open to everyone is Euro Income.

High income — Income Target 5, Income Target Growth, Income Balanced, All Weather Income, Quality Five

An option-income sleeve of 40–80%. Income of €119 to €480 a month per €10,000, drawdowns from −10% to −27%, and the largest tax bill of all. This is where offsetting realised losses matters most: it adds between one and four points a year. Quality Five is the most concentrated of the family: five covered-call funds with the best Quality Score, yielding at least 30%, one per underlying, plus a 20% ballast of three dividend ETFs. It pays the most and falls the hardest; it has the shortest history too, from August 2024.

The whole basket — All IncomeShares

All 56 IncomeShares products, equally weighted, no selection at all. The highest income on the site and, after offsetting, a return that matches the index. It is also the most fragile: 17 of its 19 current holdings distribute more than they earn, and we have measured what that means. It is the strategy we understand least, which is why it is fully open rather than behind the subscription.

What the table cannot tell you

• Three years, mostly risingEleven strategies start in January 2023 and one in August 2024. None has lived through a long decline, and the option-income sleeves have never seen a flat market — the condition in which they consume capital instead of producing it.
• Funds that exist todayOur universe contains no fund that has closed, which flatters every result. In this corner of the market closures are a matter of when.
• Rules changeWhen we refine a rule we apply it to the whole history, so past results move. This page is a snapshot, not a record.
• A model is not a portfolioThese are simulations at month-end prices with no spread and no market impact. Your broker, your timing and your nerves are not in the model.