How much UMAX for $1,000 a month?
Hamilton Utilities YIELD MAXIMIZER™ ETF. Worked against its most recent payment, then run backwards to show what the same income would have done since the fund launched.
If you had bought this income at launch
UMAX first traded on 2023-06-15 at $15.97 a unit, and its first distribution on 2023-07-28 was $0.1750 per unit. Buying 5,715 units then — $91,269 — would have started you at $1,000 a month.
Unit count never changes, so the income is whatever the rate does.
Each distribution buys more units, which themselves pay.
Prices as at 2026-08-04. Reinvestment assumes each distribution buys units at the closing price on its pay date, with no commission. Before tax throughout.
What actually happened to the income
UMAX has reduced its distribution 22 times since it launched, moving from $0.1750 to $0.1500 per unit. Whatever income you bought at launch, the same units pay about 14% less today.
That gap is the whole argument for not spending every dollar. Reinvesting every distribution would have turned each unit into 1.52 — so the same starting position pays +31% against what it started at, because the units compounded even while the rate per unit did not.
What this cannot tell you
The past rate is not a forecast. Every figure above starts from a distribution declared one month at a time. The calculation is exact; the assumption that it continues is not.
Some of this was your own money. 73% of UMAX's 2025 distributions were return of capital — not income, but capital handed back, which lowers your cost base and returns as a taxable gain when you sell. What that means.
And one fund is not a plan. Everything above assumes the entire amount in a single holding. See the full UMAX breakdown or compare what every fund would cost.
Backtest a whole portfolio, not one fund.
Run this across everything you hold at once, on the trades you actually made — combined income, real cost base, and where the holdings overlap.