IVVW vs SDTY

IVVWAiShares S&P 500 BuyWrite ETF

SDTYDYieldMax S&P 500 0DTE Covered Call Strategy ETF

In short

IVVW BlackRock's version of the covered call: hold the whole S&P 500 through the iShares Core fund, sell one-month index calls struck 1% out of the money, pay the premium out monthly. All for a quarter-point fee.

SDTY YieldMax's option-income playbook aimed at the index: SDTY builds S&P 500 exposure with options and sells calls that expire the same day, every day. Income gets harvested one session at a time, and upside gets clipped the same way.

Stated mandate

IVVW The fund seeks to track an index strategy that holds the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and sells one-month call options primarily on the S&P 500 Index to generate income. The short option position is intended to be offset by the fund’s long position in the underlying ETF.

SDTY SDTY seeks current income while providing exposure to the S&P 500 Index’s price return.

Why people hold it

• IVVW Costs 0.25% a year against a category median near 0.60%. On an income strategy, that is less of the option premium quietly leaking out the door.
• The calls sit 1% out of the money, so a slice of each month's rally still belongs to shareholders before the cap bites. At-the-money writers give that up.cboe.com
• Rules over hunches: it tracks a Cboe index that pairs a long position in the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF with a short monthly S&P 500 call, rolled on a set schedule.cboe.com
• Inside a crowded covered-call field where fat fees are the norm, this is one of the tighter builds in its peer group.

• SDTY The 0DTE twist: calls that expire the same session, written daily, so the premium clock resets every trading day instead of once a month.
• Pure label-matching: S&P 500 price exposure built synthetically, income generated by writing calls against it. What the name says is what the fund does.
• It was YieldMax's first move from single-stock option income into a broad index, live since 2025.stockanalysis.com

Worth knowing

• IVVW Covered calls trade upside for income. Above the strike, the month's gain is capped, and the premium cushions losses rather than blocking them.cboe.com
• Monthly payouts come from option premium, so they move with volatility instead of arriving as a fixed amount.
• Launched in 2024 and moderately traded, so the live record is short and spreads can run wider than the category's biggest names.

• SDTY At 1.08% a year, it costs well above the roughly 0.60% median for S&P 500 option-income funds, and multiples of IVVW (0.25%) or GPIX (0.35%).
• Selling calls every session hands away part of each strong up day. The income comes out of the fund's upside, not on top of it.
• Small and lightly traded next to the giants writing calls on the same index. Limit orders matter more here than with a heavily traded peer.

Full IVVW profile⁠

Full SDTY profile⁠