Boost Your Technology Dividends With A Unique Covered Call ETF

The world of dividend investing is being taken over by many large-cap technology companies, many of which are turning focus toward returning value to shareholders. Companies such as Apple Inc. AAPL and Microsoft Corporation MSFT have committed a significant portion of its healthy balance sheets to share repurchases and dividend payments to entice both growth and income investors.

Index providers have taken notice of this trend and responded by introducing funds such as the First Trust Exchange Traded Fd VI TDIV. This ETF selects technology companies engaged in dividend activity and weighs them according to their yield rather than a traditional market-cap focus. The end result is a portfolio of nearly 100 companies with a 30-day SEC yield of 2.63 percent.

While this focus on dividends is enticing, it may not be suitable for aggressive investors seeking a high monthly income stream or index that provides more growth opportunity.

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One potential alternative is the Recon Capital NASDAQ-100 Covered Call ETF QYLD. This ETF seeks to track the CBOE NASDAQ-100 BuyWrite Index that generates income through a covered call options strategy.

QYLD is able to collect dividends from holding the large, growth-oriented companies within the NASDAQ-100 Index along with monthly premiums from selling NASDAQ-100 Index options. Based on the recent price of QYLD and the last announced monthly dividend, the current yield on this ETF is 9.72 percent.

Sophisticated ETF investors have often used covered calls to generate additional income for their portfolios. However, QYLD simplifies that process by doing the work for someone and charging an expense ratio of 0.60 percent for accessing this monthly income strategy.

A competitive ETF in this space is the PowerShares S&P 500 BuyWrite Portfolio PDP, which also implements the same covered call options methodology to generate income on stocks in the S&P 500 Index.

Whether a trader's focus is on generating yield or capital appreciation, these equity-income tools offer an advanced way to own both stocks and options within an ETF portfolio.

Disclosure: At the time this article was published, the author owned TDIV.