Investment Q&A

Q: Hello. I was going to ask you about MSTY:US, one of YieldMax ETFs. It creates synthetic long exposure, then writes covered calls to generate income. I specifically wanted to ask you about how distributions would be treated from a tax perspective as a Canadian. The distributions are options premiums. So would the distributions then be treated as capital gains, or as US dividends? I assume there would also be a 15% US withholding tax.

When I entered the symbol to ask this question, I discovered that MSTY:CA is a Canadian equivalent, although they only have 50% exposure. Do you know anything about the company Harvest? I had never heard of them. Are they an established and reputable company? How would distributions from MSTY:CA be treated from a tax perspective? Thanks for your help

Q: I've seen these high yielding products before and just noticed that a few are now available on the TSX. I'm curious as to what your thoughts are on this type of product and how they work. I noticed the yields are pretty extreme and particularly on MSTY. I'm assuming this is maybe due to the high option premiums and volatility on the underlying MSTR?
Is there any rationale to a short term hold in this type of thing if you believe there's at least short term upside in the underlying?
(I considered buying MSTR last year but put it off. I think it maybe has a few months to a year of upside still if the Bitcoin cycle continues. Being able to buy in MSTY in $C is a plus and avoids exchange rate fees if buying and selling within a few months/year).

Thanks!