What this tool does
ETF Income Lab helps you answer one question: “If I put $10,000 into this income ETF today, what could the next 12 months look like?”
The funds it covers are derivative income ETFs – funds like TSLY, JEPI, or QDTE that own a stock or index and sell options against it to generate cash payouts. In plain terms: they trade away some of the stock’s upside in exchange for regular income, often with very high advertised yields. That trade-off is exactly what this tool measures. A 90% yield sounds incredible until you see what happens to your original investment along the way, and that’s what the simulations show you.
The Lab runs each fund through hundreds of simulated 12-month paths built from real market history and live data, then grades what it finds. It is a stress-testing tool, not a crystal ball. Nobody knows which market you’ll actually get, which is why it tests six of them.
Getting started in three steps
Step 1 — Pick your funds. Search by ticker or browse the catalog of 220+ income ETFs and select the ones you’re curious about. You can compare several side by side.
Step 2 — Read the scenario report card. The Lab automatically tests your funds across six market environments and grades each one A through F in every scenario:
| Scenario | What it means |
|---|---|
| Historical | Markets behave like the last decade |
| Sideways | The market goes roughly nowhere |
| Steady Bull | A normal good year (~13% for the S&P) |
| Strong Rally | A great year (~28%) |
| Slow Bleed | A grinding down year (~ −14%) |
| Crash | A severe bear market |
A fund that grades A in a rally but F in a crash is telling you something important: it works until it doesn’t. Look at the whole row, not just the best grade.
Step 3 — Drill into the details. Click any scenario to run a deeper analysis that simulates hundreds of possible 12-month outcomes. This is where you see the numbers behind the grade: how much income the fund paid, what happened to its share price, how far your account dipped along the way, and how often it beat simply owning its underlying stock or index.
How to read the grades
Each grade blends five things, all in plain terms: did you make money overall (Total Return), did the fund actually pay the income it advertises (Income Delivery), did your original investment survive (Capital Preservation), was the ride worth the bumps (Risk-Adjusted), and would you have been better off just buying the underlying stock or index instead (Benchmark Alpha).
Two numbers deserve special attention. Median Return is the headline. It’s the outcome a typical investor experienced across all the simulated paths, which is more honest than the average (a few lucky paths can drag an average up). And NAV change tells you what happened to the fund’s share price itself: many high-yield funds pay you handsomely while their share price steadily erodes. That’s not unusual, it’s how these products work, but your real result is income plus what’s left of your principal, and the tool always shows both.
Things a first-time user should know
High yield is not free money. If a fund advertises 80%+ and grades poorly on Capital Preservation, the simulations are showing you that much of that “income” is likely being paid out of your own principal. The yield is real; so is the erosion.
A note on autocallable/barrier funds. A small number of funds in the catalog are autocallable or barrier products, which can behave quite differently from a standard derivative income fund. If you’re considering one, further research on how these products work is warranted.
This is a simulator, not advice. The scenarios are built from real historical months, but the future can be worse than anything in the sample, and every simulation involves simplifying assumptions. Use the Lab to understand how a fund behaves and what you’re actually trading away for that yield, then make your own decision, ideally alongside a financial professional who knows your situation.
A five-minute first session
Pick one fund you’ve been eyeing plus JEPI (a conservative benchmark of the category) and the plain index fund SPY. Run the sweep. Compare the three across Sideways, Steady Bull, and Crash. In those three columns you’ll learn more about what you’re really buying than any yield advertisement will ever tell you.
Now that you know what ETF Income Lab is and what it does, go get started here. And don’t forget to leave your feedback.