I Own 220 Shares of QQQI… But GPIQ Just Beat It

Goldman Sachs just bought the company behind QQQI.

Which is interesting, because Goldman already owned the fund that competes with it. Now the same company owns both sides of the fight. Pretty smart play on their part.

I own one of them, with two hundred and twenty shares.

And here's the part I didn't expect when I started pulling the numbers for this post: the one I don't own beat the one I do. Ouch.

I'm still not switching. But there are two specific things Goldman could do that would change that, and I'll show you both before the end.

The Numbers, No Sugarcoating

Here's the comparison, and I'm not going to soften it.

GPIQ charges less than half of what QQQI charges in fees. It's not much on 220 shares, but as this position grows, it will make a difference.

And over the last twelve months, GPIQ returned more. Not a little more.

QQQI pays more income every month, which is why I own this ETF. That's the one column where my fund wins.

So if you're keeping score on fees and total return, the fund I don't own takes two out of three. That's the truth, and anybody telling you otherwise is defending a position instead of reading the actual numbers.

What's Actually Different Between Them

So what's actually different between them?

Both funds own the Nasdaq 100 and sell call options against it. That's the entire category, which has become popular over the last five years, and I like it. Nobody is doing anything really exotic here.

The difference is how hard they push it. QQQI sells more options, collects more premium, pays out more every month, and misses out on more of the big move when tech takes off.

GPIQ sells less, so it keeps more of the run, and pays you less along the way.

That's not one fund being smart and one fund being dumb. That's two funds making a different trade on purpose.

Why I Stopped Asking Which Fund Is Best

I've been investing for about thirty years. And in thirty years I have never once found the fund that wins every single column.

There will always be one fund that beats another fund. Always. Pick any twelve-month window you want, and I'll find you something that beat whatever you own.

Which is why I stopped asking which fund is the best one. That question has no answer.

The question I actually ask now is: what is this position's job?

I talk about investing buckets a lot. The short version is that every position I own sits in a bucket, and every bucket has one job. Growth is a job. Stability is a job. Income is a job.

QQQI sits in my income bucket. Its job is to produce cash every month. That is the entire assignment. That's what I bought it to do. I ran QQQI and five other income funds through my full four-rule test if you want to see exactly how it scored.

So when somebody tells me GPIQ had a better total return, okay, I believe you. But total return is not the job I gave this position.

The Number Nobody Brings Up

And honestly, if total return were what I wanted here, I wouldn't own either one of these funds.

I'd own QQQ.

Because here's the number nobody in this argument brings up: plain QQQ beat both of them.

The index beat the income fund. The index also beat the cheaper income fund. If your only goal is the biggest number at the end, you don't want a covered call fund at all. You want the thing they're both selling calls against.

Steelmanning the Other Side

Now let me argue the other side properly, because I don't want you just taking my word for this.

Here's the strongest version of the case against me.

I just turned on dividend reinvestment for QQQI. Which means I'm not spending that income right now. I'm using it to buy more shares.

And if I'm not spending the income, then what I actually care about right now is total return. And GPIQ won that.

That's a real argument, and I sat with it for a while.

Here's my answer. I'm reinvesting today because I don't need the cash yet. But I'm building this position for a version of my life where I do need the cash, and I don't want to be rebuilding the income engine at the exact moment I need it running.

The job I gave this position doesn't change based on what I happen to do with the output this year.

You can disagree with that. It's a reasonable thing to disagree with. But that's the actual reasoning, not a rationalization I came up with after the fact. And my reasoning could change over time as my financial situation changes, which is fair. If you've been investing for a while, I'm sure you've been through this too.

What Would Actually Make Me Switch

So where does the Goldman deal actually matter?

Honestly, less than the headlines want you to think. Big firms buy smaller firms. That by itself is not a reason to sell anything.

But there are exactly two things I'm watching, and if either one moves, I might move, and I'll let you know here.

The first is the fee. QQQI already costs more than double what GPIQ costs. If Goldman raises that number, the gap I'm already paying for gets wider, and the argument for staying gets thinner.

The second is the options strategy. If they change how aggressively this fund sells calls, then the income, the actual job I bought it for, changes with it.

That's my trigger. I don't care about the headline or whose logo ends up on the paperwork. Those two specific numbers matter to me, and probably to other QQQI investors as well.

If Goldman touches the fee or touches the strategy, the fund I bought isn't the fund I own anymore, and I'll act on that.

Where This Leaves Me

So let's land this.

Goldman owns both sides now, which I don't like from a competition standpoint. The one I don't own has a lower fee and had a better year. And I'm still not switching.

Not because I'm stubborn, and not because I'm married to a ticker. Because I didn't buy this fund to win a twelve-month window. I bought it to do a specific job in a specific bucket, and right now it's doing that job.

If that ever stops being true, I'll tell you. Same way I just told you my fund lost.

If you want the full breakdown of what these buckets are, what goes in each one, and why I only need three of them instead of the ten funds everybody tells you to buy, I've laid the whole system out in my post comparing 15 ETFs across the three buckets. That's the one to read next, because it's the reason this whole post makes any sense.

Watch the full video above, or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/YdlyRJydBco