The Plan, and the Funds Behind It
The setup comes from a widely shared income plan. Put $20,000 into each of three high-yield ETFs, then send every payout into two dividend growers: Altria (MO) and Enbridge (ENB). The reasoning is that “dividend growth always wins.”
The three feeder funds are all option-income ETFs. NestYield EGGS (Total Return Guard ETF) runs a selective covered-call strategy on a concentrated portfolio of 10 to 25 holdings, with tactical hedges on top. Kurv KQQQ (Technology Titans Select ETF) holds mega-cap tech names like Alphabet, Amazon and Broadcom with an income overlay. NEOS XQQI (Boosted Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF) is built to give about 150% notional exposure to its sibling fund QQQI, so it uses leverage to raise both the payout and the swings. The growers on the receiving end are Altria, the Marlboro maker, and Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline and gas-utility operator. As a plain-vanilla benchmark, we used SCHD, Schwab's index fund of roughly 100 established dividend payers.
The result splits by time frame. Over the full histories, going back to 2024, buying MO and ENB directly beat the fuel plan by 18 to 28 percentage points through Oct. 16, and it was ahead on every end date we tested. Over 2026 alone, the lead changed hands. Buying direct was ahead from February through April, when the feeders were down and MO and ENB were up. The fuel plan pulled ahead over the summer, led on every end date from Aug. 4 on (a stretch that includes all 45 dates from Aug. 14 that we look at closely below), and fell behind only on Oct. 16, the last day of the backtest, when the feeders dropped and the growers rallied. Both results come back to the same thing: how each feeder's own total return compared with the growers'.
How We Ran the Test
- Plan A (fuel): $20,000 in each feeder. Every payout is split 50/50 into MO and ENB on the pay date. MO and ENB dividends are reinvested in MO and ENB.
- Plan B (direct): The same total dollars split 50/50 straight into MO and ENB, with dividends reinvested.
- Plan C (SCHD): The same dollars in SCHD, with dividends reinvested.
We used daily closing prices and every distribution through October 16, 2026. To check how fragile each result is, we also re-ran every test with each trading day from Feb. 10 to Oct. 16, 2026 as the end date (173 dates), and looked closely at the last 45, from Aug. 14 on. Taxes and trading costs are not included. All dollar figures below come from a hypothetical backtest, not real accounts.
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.
Test 1: All Three Feeders, Feb. 3 to Oct. 16, 2026
XQQI began trading Feb. 3, 2026, so that is the earliest date all three funds can be compared. Total invested: $60,000.
| Feeder | Start Price | End Price | Price Change | Paid Out | Paid as % of Cost | $20K Now Worth | Own Total Return* |
| EGGS | $37.83 | $32.71 | -13.5% | $2,861 | 14.3% | $17,293 | -0.1% |
| KQQQ | $27.38 | $28.14 | +2.8% | $2,089 | 10.4% | $20,552 | +13.8% |
| XQQI | $49.27 | $47.21 | -4.2% | $3,098 | 15.5% | $19,165 | +11.7% |
*Own total return assumes payouts were reinvested in the same fund. “$20K Now Worth” is the feeder position alone, after its payouts were sent to MO/ENB.
| Plan | Ending Value | Return |
| A: Fuel (feeders $57,010 + growers bought with payouts $8,205) | $65,215 | +8.7% |
| B: Direct MO/ENB | $67,270 | +12.1% |
| C: SCHD | $69,235 | +15.4% |
Through Oct. 16, the fuel plan finished last over this 8.5-month window. SCHD finished first and direct MO/ENB came second.
