Most of what gets written about NEOS in 2026 is about tax character — how much of each monthly distribution the issuer's 19a-1 notices estimate as return of capital. This page answers a different question with the same lineup: across the NEOS funds mapped on CoverCall Ledger, what did the annual financial statements show for period profit versus distributions paid in the 2025 filing year?
That is Dist. coverage — accrual earned vs paid. It is not a yield ranking, not a tax opinion, and not a view on whether any of these funds is a good holding.
What NEOS runs
NEOS Investments is a US issuer whose option-income ETFs sit at the index level rather than the single-stock level. The core funds hold the constituents of a broad index directly and run a data-driven call overlay on top: SPYI on the S&P 500, QQQI on the Nasdaq-100, IWMI on the Russell 2000, NIHI on MSCI EAFE.
Around that core sits a wider shelf — hedged-equity variants (SPYH, QQQH), fixed-income overlays (CSHI, BNDI, HYBI, TLTI), and thematic sleeves in gold (IAUI), real estate (IYRI), energy infrastructure (MLPI), long/short (NLSI) and crypto (BTCI, NEHI).
That structural choice matters for this site. Index-level overlays and concentrated single-name overlays have behaved very differently in the mapped filings, and the NEOS lineup happens to contain both ends of that spectrum.
Read the period label first
Every NEOS fund mapped on CoverCall Ledger is mapped to a partial 2025 period, labelled `2025 stub` or `2025 partial`, sourced from the NEOS annual financial statements.
A stub period is the fund's stated financial-statement window, not a full calendar year. So these percentages are internally consistent — earned and paid are measured over the same window — but they are not directly comparable to a fund carrying a full twelve-month 2025 filing, and they are not an annualised run rate. Compare NEOS to NEOS here, and treat cross-issuer comparisons as directional.
The 2025 base rate
Twenty NEOS funds are listed on CoverCall Ledger. Sixteen distinct funds are mapped to a 2025 filing; ten of those cleared 100%, and the median mapped fund sat right at 100% covered.
| Dist. coverage (2025 filing period) | Mapped NEOS funds |
|---|---|
| Covered (100%+) | 10 |
| 50–99% | 1 |
| 1–49% | 4 |
| 0% — filings showed a period loss | 1 |
That is a notably stronger base rate than the mapped US-listed set on this site as a whole, where 26 of 102 funds cleared 100% and the median is near 52%. The reason is composition, not nationality: the US mapped set here is dominated by single-stock option-income funds, while NEOS is dominated by broad-index overlays. It is the same lesson the Canadian shelf teaches in reverse — design drives coverage far more than domicile does.
The index core covered its distributions
| Ticker | Fund | Dist. coverage | Earned vs paid (2025 period) |
|---|---|---|---|
| SPYI | S&P 500 High Income | Covered | $682.0M vs $379.0M |
| QQQI | Nasdaq-100 High Income | Covered | $590.7M vs $413.7M |
| IWMI | Russell 2000 High Income | Covered | $46.4M vs $26.2M |
| QQQH | Nasdaq-100 Hedged Equity Income | Covered | $37.5M vs $18.3M |
| IAUI | Gold High Income | Covered | $23.6M vs $9.0M |
| NIHI | MSCI EAFE High Income | Covered | $1.1M vs $0.8M |
| SPYH | S&P 500 Hedged Equity Income | Covered | $0.9M vs $0.5M |
The two flagships are the clearest cases. SPYI reported roughly 1.8x its distributions in period profit, and QQQI roughly 1.4x. On the accrual lens, for that mapped window, the strategy generated more than it paid out.
On the fixed-income side, BNDI and HYBI also cleared 100%, and CSHI came in at 98% — $18.6M earned against $19.0M distributed, a gap of well under half a million dollars on the mapped period.
Where the lineup thinned out
| Ticker | Fund | Dist. coverage | Earned vs paid (2025 period) |
|---|---|---|---|
| CSHI | 1-3 Month T-Bill | 98% | $18.6M vs $19.0M |
| TLTI | 20+ Year Treasury | 45% | $0.09M vs $0.21M |
| IYRI | Real Estate High Income | 38% | $2.8M vs $7.4M |
| MLPI | MLP & Energy Infrastructure | 25% | $0.02M vs $0.08M |
| NEHI | Ethereum High Income | 25% | $0.06M vs $0.25M |
| BTCI | Bitcoin High Income | 0% | Loss of $160.1M vs $110.0M paid |
The shortfalls cluster in the satellite sleeves, and mostly in the smallest ones — several of the funds above earned and distributed well under a million dollars over the mapped period, so the percentages move on very small absolute numbers. Read the dollar column, not just the percentage.
BTCI is the exception on scale. Its mapped filings reported a loss of $160.1M for the period while $110.0M went out the door, so accrual coverage reads 0%. That is not a tax characterization and not an accusation — it means there was no period profit to set against the cheque. Every mapped bitcoin-linked fund on this site, Canadian and US alike, reads the same way for 2025.
Coverage is not the ROC question
This is the distinction worth being precise about, because the two get conflated constantly in the current NEOS conversation.
Reports through 2026 have highlighted that NEOS 19a-1 notices estimate a large share of recent monthly distributions as return of capital, a consequence of using Section 1256 index options and harvesting losses inside the fund. Those notices are issuer estimates, and final character is not settled until the year-end 1099.
Dist. coverage does not measure that. It reads the annual financial statements and asks whether period profit — including unrealized gains — was at least as large as distributions paid. A fund can distribute cash that is mostly classified as ROC for tax purposes and still show period profit that exceeds what it paid. On the mapped 2025 periods, the NEOS index funds did exactly that.
So a high ROC estimate is not, by itself, evidence that a fund failed to earn its distribution — and strong Dist. coverage is not a promise about your tax bill. They are two different lenses on the same cheque. Return of capital vs "earned the cheque" works through that in full.
Not mapped yet
Three NEOS funds — XQQI, XSPI and XBCI, the "Boosted" variants — launched during 2026 and so have no 2025 annual filing to map. Their fund pages are tape-only: price and last distribution from the exchange, no Dist. coverage percentage.
That is deliberate. CoverCall Ledger does not estimate a coverage figure from yield, distribution size, or a sibling fund's filing, so those rows stay blank until a filing exists. A headline distribution rate on a brand-new fund tells you what is being paid, not what was earned.
How to check this yourself
1. Open the live coverage table and filter to United States, then sort by Dist. coverage.
2. On any fund page, read the period label before the percentage — stub and partial windows are not full years.
3. Compare earned vs paid in dollars, especially on the small sleeves where a percentage is noisy.
4. Confirm every figure against the NEOS annual financial statements linked on the fund page.
For the neighbouring US names, see JEPI vs JEPQ vs QYLD; for the single-stock end of the option-income market, see YieldMax / single-stock option income; for the labels themselves, see How to read Dist. coverage.
Bottom line
For the mapped 2025 filing periods, the NEOS index-level overlays — SPYI, QQQI, IWMI and the hedged variants — showed period profit that covered their distributions, while the smaller thematic and crypto sleeves did not. That is a backward-looking fact about one partial period, not a forecast and not a ranking. This is educational research built from public issuer filings — not investment, tax, or trading advice.