| # Symbol | Fund name | Price | DayChange % | 1Y TotalReturn | YTDPerf | 1MPerf | 6MPerf | YieldTTM | YieldFWD | Frequency |
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Most dividend trackers rank by yield alone — the bigger the number, the better the rank. This tracker does the opposite. Total return is the primary metric, because a 60% yield means nothing if the fund loses 50% of its value.
The "High-Yield, Best Total Return ETF's" strategy focuses on dividend ETFs that deliver both: genuinely high income and positive capital growth. Funds that sacrifice share price to pay dividends are flagged as yield traps and surfaced as warnings, not recommendations.
Every ETF in the leaderboard is sorted descending by 1Y Total Return by default. ETFs with less than 12 months of history show "—" for that column and sort to the bottom, but remain visible because they may already have strong 6M momentum.
A yield trap is a fund that looks attractive on paper because of its high distribution yield, but is actively destroying capital. The rule applied here:
When both conditions are true, the ETF is flagged in the leaderboard and counted in the yield trap indicator. These are funds to avoid, not buy.
Why two different thresholds? The tracker uses a 6% minimum yield as the eligibility floor — that defines what counts as a genuinely high-yield fund. The yield trap warning is set at a higher 8% threshold because it targets a more specific danger: funds so aggressively distributing income that they are actively destroying their net asset value. A fund yielding 6.5% with a slightly negative total return may simply be going through a rough patch. A fund yielding 60% with a deeply negative return is almost certainly paying out its own capital as income — a classic yield trap. The 8% line is where that pattern becomes a meaningful warning signal.