What SEPI Is, in Plain English
A covered call means you own a stock and sell someone else the right to buy it from you at a set price. You get cash up front, called the premium. In return, you give up gains above that price. Income funds turn those premiums into monthly distributions.
Funds write these calls in three main ways. Some sell calls on individual stocks (SEPI, DIVO). Some sell calls on an index like the S&P 500 (SPYI, GPIX). JPMorgan's JEPI gets its option income through equity-linked notes, which are securities that package the option exposure. Covered-call funds have gathered billions of dollars in assets because of the demand for monthly income. The tradeoff is always the same: current cash in exchange for capped upside.
The Shelton Equity Premium Income ETF (SEPI) launched on 9/8/2025. It holds about 40 large-cap US stocks and writes calls on each one, but only on part of each position (more on that below). Its fact sheet also discloses the fund's use of put options. According to Shelton's 2Q26 fact sheet, the fund's objective is high income plus capital appreciation.
The Claim
A dividend YouTuber argued that SEPI is outperforming SPYI and JEPI, based on max-timeframe total return. For SEPI, the max timeframe is about 12 months. The fair test is to put every fund on that same window.
From 9/8/2025 to 9/28/2026, SEPI's total return with distributions reinvested was about +25.8%. That is ahead of GPIX, SPYI and JEPI, and about 6 points ahead of SPY. On this window the claim holds. The more useful question is what produced the lead.
Performance and yield figures are historical and may change. Total return includes price movement and distributions where available. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Yield is not the same as total return.
SEPI at a Glance
| Metric | SEPI |
| Current price | $29.05 |
| 52-week range | $24.23 – $29.54 |
| Latest distribution | $0.20/share (ex-date 8/28/2026), paid monthly |
| Annualized run-rate (latest payout) | 8.26% |
| Trailing distribution yield | 7.23% ($2.10/share, 11 payments since launch) |
| Expense ratio | 0.54% (per 2Q26 fact sheet) |
| AUM | ~$190M (9/2026); net assets were $152.4M at 6/30/2026 and $19.2M at 9/30/2025 |
| Holdings | 40 stocks, all 40 with written calls (6/30/2026) |
| Average days to option expiration | 29 (6/30/2026) |
| Inception | 9/8/2025 |
1. Distribution Yield: 7.23% Trailing, 8.26% Run-Rate
SEPI's latest distribution was $0.20 per share, with an ex-date of 8/28/2026. Twelve payments at that level on the $29.05 price works out to 8.26% a year.
The trailing figure is lower: $2.10 per share, or 7.23%. It covers 11 payments (October 2025 through August 2026; the first ex-date was 10/30/2025) because the fund has not yet completed 12 monthly payments. That makes the trailing number understate a full year's pace. It is still the most accurate record of what a holder has actually received.
Distributions vary from month to month, and the fund does not guarantee a set rate. The question every covered-call fund raises is whether the payout comes from earnings and premium or partly returns the investor's own capital. The NAV section below addresses that.
2. Total Return: The Same Window for Every Fund
Total return is price change plus distributions. All figures below use market prices, with distributions reinvested. It measures how much wealthier a holder actually is. SEPI has only about one year of history, so the 1-year and since-inception windows are effectively the same, and no 3-year figure exists yet. The table compares SEPI with three covered-call peers (JEPI, SPYI and GPIX), with SPY as the benchmark.
