Retirement Investment Portfolios - SPY Vs. QYLD - Cody Caudillo - College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, Arizona State University

Oct 12, 2026

A comparative study evaluates retirement-oriented equities SPY versus QYLD, focusing on risk, return potential, volatility, and relative performance over January 2014 to September 2022. The work explains portfolio rationale, contrasts SPY’s S&P 500 linkage with QYLD’s covered-call income-dividend structure, and motivates dividend reinvestment concepts. Methods rely on return percentage metrics, descriptive statistics, and distributional diagnostics, including a Shapiro-Wilks normality test and skewness/CDF interpretations.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryPresentations

FormatPDF

Pages1

AccessFree to download

Introduction and Objectives

Reason for Interest

Background Information

Purpose and Research Questions

Methods and Metrics

Return Percentage

Mean

Standard Deviation

Skewness

Data Sources

Testing the Assumption of Normality

Retirement Investment Portfolios: SPY Vs . QYLD Cody Caudillo 1 College of Integrative Sciences and Arts, Arizona State University, Polytechnic Advisor: Dr. Yun Kang2 [1](1 cacaudi1@asu.edu)[ cacaudi1@asu.edu](1 cacaudi1@asu.edu), [2](2 yun.kang@asu.edu)[ yun.kang@asu.edu](2 yun.kang@asu.edu) Introduction and Objectives Results Reason for Interest ● Individual and Commercial investors alike aim for the least risk and the highest return. It is not always clear which equity is “better”, only which one is more popular based on trading volume. ● Different equities within the stock market operate differently from one another. For instance, an ETF such as SPY gets most of its returns from the various companies that it is comprised of while an income dividend stock may choose an alternate pathway to achieve monetary gain. QYLD for instance, writes covered call index options on the NASDAQ 100 Index fund. ● Mapping historical risk, performance, and returns aids in solidifying which equity an investor should choose for the largest financial gain. ● A diverse portfolio is common for retirement and long-term investors. Since most dividend income stocks don’t vary in share price drastically through the years, we should wonder why an investor should want them in the portfolio at all. Background Information ● The S&P500 is an index fund that tracks the top 500 highest grossing companies in the United States. An index fund means there are multiple companies considered for a weighted average within the fund. In this case, 500 companies rotated throughout time, based on their gross revenue. ● SPY is an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that is listed on the market at 10% the price of the S&P500 Index. SPY otherwise mimics the S&P500 throughout each trading day. ● Both equities distribute dividends to their shareholders. A dividend is a form of payment per share (PPS) usually given as a monetary amount or share amount. The amount and frequency of distributions are decided by the board of directors for the respective company. They decide how much revenue they’ve made, how much of it to give to the shareholders, and how often to distribute. ● QYLD is considered an “income dividend stock”. That is, the overall share price does not alter much through the years. Most capital gainsan investor will receive come from dividend distributions. ● While SPY has an approximate 1.65% annual dividend yield per an investor’s total funds (TD Ameritrade, 09/01/22), it is only allocated every quarter. QYLD on the other hand has an approximate 12.94% annual dividend yield per an investor’s total funds (TD Ameritrade, 09/01/22) and allocates funds every month. Therein, QYLD distributes much higher amounts of capital gains to its investors. ● In a “set it and forget it” style of retirement investing it is common to set up what is called a Dividend Reinvestment Program (DRIP) . This program automatically invests the funds gained from dividends to buy more shares of the respective stock, should there be enough in the brokerage account to cover the cost. Although some brokers allow for “partial” shares to be bought, this analysis has been configured in consideration of “whole” shares only. Purpose and Research Questions ● This project aims to compare the stocks, SPY and QYLD, respectively. ● The goal of this research is to determine the best overall equity between the two with the hypothesis being that QYLD outperforms SPY regardless of market conditions throughout the years. The goal is to prove that income dividend stocks are just as viable as ETFs. ● An evaluation will aim to examine which equity contains the least amount of risk, the highest potential for positive returns, the least volatility, and overall best relative performance for an investor from January of 2014 through September of 2022. |
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FAQs

What comparison does the study focus on between SPY and QYLD?

The study compares the equities SPY and QYLD to determine which provides the best overall outcome across risk and returns over the specified period.

How does the paper frame the difference between SPY and QYLD?

SPY is tied to the S&P 500 through an ETF structure, while QYLD is described as an income dividend approach using covered call index options on the NASDAQ 100 Index fund.

What test is used to check whether the return distributions are normal?

A Shapiro-Wilks test is applied to both datasets; results show p-values indicating that neither SPY nor QYLD follows a normal distribution.

Oct 12, 2026

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