Screening Filters
Monthly Average Dollar Volume ≥ $300,000
- Purpose: Ensure the ETFs are reasonably liquid and easy to trade.
- Rationale: Higher trading volume typically means tighter bid–ask spreads and better execution when you’re buying or selling. For an income-focused portfolio you may rebalance periodically, so avoiding illiquid, thinly traded funds reduces transaction costs and the risk of large price slippage.
Themes: High Yield Bonds, Preferred Stock, Convertible Bonds, Real Estate, MLPs, Utilities Equities
- Purpose: Focus on asset classes/sectors that are structurally income-oriented.
- Rationale:
- High Yield Bonds: Designed to pay higher coupons, so bond ETFs in this space tend to have elevated distribution yields.
- Preferred Stock: Hybrid securities with relatively high, regular dividends.
- Convertible Bonds: Often pay coupons while offering some equity upside; still part of the income toolkit.
- Real Estate (REITs): Legally required (in many jurisdictions) to pay out a high portion of income as dividends.
- MLPs (Master Limited Partnerships): Structured to distribute a large share of their cash flows to unitholders.
- Utilities Equities: Historically stable, regulated businesses that tend to pay steady dividends.
Targeting these themes aligns the search with ETFs that are explicitly built to generate cash flow, which is central to a portfolio aimed at providing ongoing income.
Annual Dividend Yield ≥ 7%
- Purpose: Filter for relatively high-income ETFs so the portfolio can meaningfully contribute to regular cash needs.
- Rationale: A 7%+ yield threshold is quite aggressive and narrows results to funds that pay out substantial distributions. For someone wanting “weekly income,” the priority is cash-flow intensity rather than pure capital appreciation. A higher yield means, for a given invested amount, more dollars coming in over the course of a year that you can then budget weekly.
Dividend Frequency: Monthly
- Purpose: Prioritize frequent, predictable cash distributions.
- Rationale: While ETFs typically don’t pay literally every week, monthly-pay ETFs are a practical way to approximate “weekly income”:
- You receive cash 12 times per year instead of just quarterly or semi-annually.
- You can then allocate or withdraw that monthly income on a weekly schedule for your own spending.
Weekly-paying ETFs are extremely rare, so filtering for monthly frequency is the most realistic way to get near-continuous cash flow from mainstream, diversified ETFs.
Expense Ratio ≤ 0.60%
- Purpose: Control costs so that fees don’t eat too much into your distributions.
- Rationale: High-yield strategies often come with higher fees. Capping the expense ratio at 0.60% aims to balance access to specialized income funds while still keeping costs within a reasonable range. Lower fees mean more of the ETF’s underlying income ends up in your pocket as dividends.
Why Results Match
- The income focus is captured by both the high-yield themes (bonds, REITs, preferreds, MLPs, utilities) and the ≥7% dividend yield requirement, aligning directly with your goal of building an income-generating ETF portfolio.
- The monthly dividend frequency ensures cash is coming in regularly and can be budgeted or withdrawn on a weekly basis, even if the actual ETF distributions are monthly.
- The liquidity filter (≥ $300k average dollar volume) helps ensure you can enter and exit positions efficiently as you build and adjust your 5-ETF portfolio.
- The expense ratio cap (≤ 0.60%) preserves more of the yield, which is critical when your main objective is maximizing sustainable cash flow rather than just gross yield.
Together, these filters narrow the universe to practical, tradable, income-oriented ETFs that can realistically support a weekly cash-flow plan once implemented.
This list is generated based on data from one or more third party data providers. It is provided for informational purposes only by Intellectia.AI, and is not investment advice or a recommendation. Intellectia does not make any warranty or guarantee relating to the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of any third-party information, and the provision of this information does not constitute a recommendation.