XQQI vs. QQQI: How Leverage Boosts the Payout — and the Risk

XQQI: The Nasdaq-100 Income Trade, Turned Up

XQQI is the NEOS Boosted Nasdaq-100 High Income ETF, and it launched in February 2026. At today's price of $49.21, the fund's latest monthly distribution of $0.8236 per share annualizes to a run-rate above 20%.

The simplest way to describe it: XQQI is its sibling QQQI with leverage bolted on. QQQI holds the Nasdaq-100 and sells call options against it for income. XQQI does the same thing, then adds roughly 50% more exposure on top — targeting about 150% notional exposure to the index.

That extra exposure is the whole point, and it's what this piece is about. It funds a bigger payout. It also changes the risk math in a way every holder should understand before the fund meets its first real downturn.

How the Boost Actually Works

Start with what QQQI does: it owns the real Nasdaq-100 basket — NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft and the rest — and sells covered calls against those holdings. The option premium becomes the distribution.

XQQI holds that same basket, then layers on a synthetic long: it buys index call options and sells index puts at the same strike. That combination behaves almost exactly like owning the index one-for-one, and it's nearly free to carry because the premium collected on the sold puts offsets the cost of the bought calls.

The result is roughly 150% exposure to the Nasdaq-100 for close to the capital of a 100% position. And more exposure means more contracts to write calls against — about 50% more covered calls than QQQI sells. That is where the larger distribution comes from.

Here's the part that matters most. Leverage is symmetric on the way down but the sold calls still cap the upside. If the Nasdaq-100 falls 20%, the synthetic long can push XQQI down roughly 25% or more. If the index rallies hard, the written calls truncate how much of that XQQI keeps. Amplified on the downside, capped on the upside.

That asymmetry compounds through recovery math. A 20% loss requires a 25% gain just to break even; a 50% loss requires a 100% gain. A hole dug faster is also a hole that's harder to climb out of — and capped upside is a slower ladder.

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.

1. Distribution Yield — The TTM Number

XQQI pays monthly. The latest declared distribution is $0.8236 per share (declared 2026-08-05), which at the current price annualizes to a price-based run-rate of 20.08%; NEOS's official stated distribution rate is 21.19% (the small gap is a basis difference).

The trailing-12-month distribution yield is 12.01%, on $5.9095 of distributions per share over the trailing year. Those two numbers differ for a specific reason: the fund is only about six months old, so the TTM figure doesn't yet capture a full year at the current pace. The run-rate is the forward pace; the TTM is the historical actual, and it will keep rising toward the run-rate as more months at this level roll into the trailing window.

Now the number that reframes all of it. XQQI’s 30-day SEC yield — the fund’s actual net investment income after expenses — is -0.34%. Negative. The gap between a 20%-plus distribution and a below-zero income yield is the whole story of these funds: almost none of the payout is “income” in the traditional sense. It is option premium and a return of the holder’s own capital, routed back monthly. QQQI tells the same story at -0.04%. That is not a scandal — it is how the strategy is built — but it is exactly why the next three sections matter more than the headline rate.