Millions of investors, many of them retired, depend on preferred stock, exchange-traded debt, BDCs and option-income funds for a large part of their monthly cash flow. The tools they use have not kept pace. Most screeners still treat a preferred as a checkbox under common stock. Brokers report income by quarter, which hides when a call can take a position away. The data vendors who track these issues sell to institutions, not to the household that holds the shares.
YieldDesk exists to close that gap. We are building the tools we wanted when we ran our own income portfolios. A screener that knows how a preferred differs from a common share. A calendar that knows when each issue pays. Alerts that flag a call window before the issuer acts. And a score that answers one question: does this issue earn its distribution.
What we believe
Income needs its own score. Equity analysts grade common stock on growth, valuation and momentum. None of that applies to a 6.5% preferred trading at $24.40. We built the Income Quality Score (IQS) on five measures of whether an income holding earns its distribution: distribution coverage, issuer credit, buyback economics, structure and call protection. The score is in beta. The method is published and in use, and we are still tuning its weights and thresholds. The methodology page shows the math.
A headline yield is not enough.A high distribution from an option-income fund can be option premium, dividends or a return of the holder’s own capital. The difference matters for compounding and for taxes. We score covered-call ETFs on five points. The source of the distribution. What the fund writes options against. Whether the principal held while the fund paid. What the income costs. Whether the fund is likely to last. Each part is labelled plainly. YieldDesk never shows a headline yield without the context behind it.
The method is public. Every screen, alert and score on the site follows a published set of rules that anyone can read. When a rule changes, we publish a release note and an explanation with it. The score is not a black box.
Built for the long-term holder. YieldDesk is not a trading platform. We do not push frequent trading, and we do not hold client assets. We help an investor decide what to own and what it adds up to. Then we step aside.
What is built
The product runs from research to portfolio without being a brokerage. The main parts:
- Screeners with filters built for preferreds and baby bonds: price against par, call window, cumulative or not, pay cycle, coupon and qualified-dividend status.
- Watchlists with a note on each issue and a one-step move into holdings.
- Holdings and income: positions entered by hand or imported from CSV, projected monthly and yearly income, and yield on cost from real share counts.
- An Income Calendar with month and year views, for watchlist projections or holdings income.
- Alerts on price, call windows, dividend declarations, insider filings and a move across par, sent by email, push and in the app.
- Four asset classes: preferreds and baby bonds, preferred ETFs, covered-call ETFs and BDCs, each scored under its own rules.
Who is behind it
Roar Ventures LLC, a small studio in Summit, New Jersey, builds YieldDesk. Its founder spent decades on Wall Street, and years running his own income portfolios with tools built for something else. We are a small team on purpose. We answer email, we read every piece of feedback, and we ship in small, public steps. Bug reports and feature requests reach a person at info@yielddesk.co.
Contact
Email info@yielddesk.co
55 Union Place, #265
Summit, New Jersey 07901
, or read the methodology first to see how the score is built.