While we cannot personalize responses, and each individual investor has their own unique risk tolerance levels and ability to take risks, one positive factor about HMAX is that it does not use leverage. Hamilton is fairly new but it is growing fast, its total AUM is still fairly small though ($2B to $2.5B AUM). Its high yield ETFs were launched around 2023, but in terms of size and scale they are very small compared to a large name like Blackrock, Vanguard, any of the Big 6 Banks. Hamilton has a credible team that is specialized in options though, and for HMAX, it writes covered calls on about 50% of the portfolio, and often at-the-money, which does not allow for as much upside potential as other covered call ETFs, but focuses more on the income side.
The high yield of HMAX is nice, but this strategy can underperform in rising markets, and some of the distributions may be Return of Capital. It also has over 75% of its holdings in the Big 6 banks. We are OK with the name, but it is quite new, the AUM is about $2.0B, and we would be highly cautious on position sizing. We would prefer an approach of diversifying across several different ETF issuers and strategies.