I built Dividend Decoder because yield alone can be dangerously misleading

For a long time, I felt that a lot of dividend and income products get judged too quickly by the headline yield.

The problem is: a high yield can look attractive while hiding a much harder question underneath:

Is that income actually being supported, or is principal being quietly eroded?

That frustration is what pushed me to build Dividend Decoder

You can check it here: cashstreams.io

It’s a tool for analyzing income-focused funds and dividend products beyond the surface-level payout. Instead of stopping at yield, I wanted a faster way to check things like:

• whether total return is supporting the distribution

• whether capital erosion may be happening underneath

• whether the fund looks relatively stable or fragile

I’m still building and refining it, but the goal is simple:

Help income investors ask not just “How much does it pay?” but also “What am I giving up for that yield?”

Would genuinely love feedback from this community:

When you look at an income product, what do you trust most first — yield, total return, NAV trend, drawdown profile, or something else?