Profit From a Fund in a Hurry to Chase Its Peers

Zero days to expiration (0DTE) option trading involves buying or selling puts or calls in the morning that expire that afternoon. The trading avoids the dangers of having open option trades open when the markets are closed, and news events can cause significant share price changes when the markets open.

Only three securities, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY), the Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ), and the iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM), have options with daily expirations. They are actually weekly options that come out every day of the week; at the end of the week, they are at 0DTE.

Three ETF companies offer 0DTE funds, selling calls every day (covered call trading) to generate cash to pay weekly dividends.

Defiance ETFs launched their three ETFs—symbols WDTE, QQQY, and IWMY—in September 2023. Initially, these ETFs employed a put-selling strategy. The yields were very high, and the returns were subpar. The funds were forced to make a one-for-three reverse stock split in July 2024. In March 2025, Defiance got on board with its peers and switched to selling daily call options.

Roundhill ETFs launched their first two 0DTE ETFs, XDTE and QDTE, in March 2024. RDTE (with IWM underlying) launched in September 2024.

YieldMax ETFs launched their three 0DTE funds in February 2025. The stock symbols are SDTY, QDTY, and RDTY.

Since the three fund sponsors can only use the three available underlying ETFs, and since selling single-day calls will not leave much room for option trading flexibility, it’s not surprising that, since Defiance switched to selling calls, the returns have been very comparable. 

Since a covered call trading strategy can often make gains out of a market decline difficult, I like comparing option strategy ETF returns from the bear market bottom on April 8 to the present. Here are those returns for the three QQQ 0DTE ETFs.

The charts show that the Definance fund, QQQY, has been more aggressive with call selling, so it has lagged in its total return. The other two ETFs, QDTE and QDTY, posted very similar results.