Why Master of Yield exists
For decades, living on investment income was a privilege of large fortunes. Income funds that sell options changed the arithmetic — first in the United States, now in Europe. This page explains what changed, why a high yield is not automatically real income, and the four principles the whole site is built on.
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1. The old world of dividends
Take €1,500 a month — €18,000 a year, before tax. It is roughly what many people in Europe would call a decent salary. The capital you need to collect it from dividends is simple arithmetic: the yearly income divided by the yield.
The S&P 500 pays a dividend yield of around one and a half percent, often less: more than a million euros for that salary. Even a classic dividend portfolio at 4% needs €450,000. And growing that income took patience — dividends grew a few percent a year, and it could take decades before they meant something in a monthly budget.
2. What changed
A new kind of fund arrived: covered-call and put-writing funds, first in the United States and now, more and more, in Europe as UCITS funds that any European investor can buy. Many pay every month, with yields in the double digits. And credit where it is due: their managers do a job that used to require time, skills and an options account.
a stock or an index.
someone else the right to buy it at a higher price.
paid for that right becomes your income.
You give up part of the big rallies, and in exchange you are paid every month, whatever the market does. That changes the arithmetic:
This is a form of democratisation: income investing is no longer reserved for the few. Even with smaller capital, income can become a real supplement to a salary and, over time, grow until it covers the expenses. Today Master of Yield tracks 150 UCITS income funds, and the list keeps growing.
Capital figures are arithmetic for €18,000 a year before tax, not projections. Yields of 15% or more are not guaranteed and can come with a falling price — which is the point of section 4.
3. Two philosophies
This is not the only way to invest, and neither philosophy is right or wrong. It depends on the investor.
- Usually more capital in the long run
- Hard to touch without slowing the compounding
- When you need money, you decide what to sell, and when
- The textbook answer, and right for many people
- Paid every month, without selling anything
- Tangible: you spend it or reinvest it, and you watch it grow
- Part of the capital growth goes into that income
- In thirty years the final number may be smaller
Many investors end up mixing the two: they accumulate while they work and shift towards income as the years go by, or they build an income sleeve next to a core portfolio. The real question is personal: do you want the largest possible number in thirty years, or an income you can live on — and see growing — along the way?
4. The catch
Here is the part most channels skip: a high yield is not automatically real income. Some funds pay you back your own capital — the distribution is high, but the price keeps falling, year after year. Covered calls also cap the upside, and in a crash the price falls anyway.
(September 2026 report)
even after every distribution
From the outside, the two situations look the same: the yield is high in both cases. That is exactly why Master of Yield exists.
5. Why strategies
The second reason is discipline. Investing without a strategy is a bet: you buy what is in the news, sell when you are scared, and your results depend on your mood. A strategy is a set of written rules, tested on the past and applied the same way every month.
One example, the rules of Quality Five:
- Every month-end
- The five best Quality Scores among covered-call funds
- A yield of at least 30%
- One fund per underlying stock
- Kept until it leaves the top seven
Because the rules are fixed, you can test them honestly and see how they behaved in the good years and in the bad ones before putting a single euro on the table.
A strategy does not promise the future: nobody knows what happens next. But rules tested over time can improve your odds, and they replace impulse with method.
6. The four principles of the site
That is why the site shows the bad months as clearly as the good ones. If a strategy fell by 27% from its peak, you read it right next to its income — because an investor who knows the catch in advance is an investor who does not sell at the worst moment.
Master of Yield exists so that income investing is not only for the few, and so that nobody has to do it blind.