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Comment by gr2020 | Hacker News Reader

gr2020

Leveraged index funds generally work as expected on an intraday basis - but they're not intended for longer term holds. You can of course try it, but things will not turn out as you'd hope. Here's an article describing what happens:

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-advisors/082...

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Outside of tracking error and expense fees, there is a more fundamental issue. When the market goes down X%, you need it to go back up Y = 1/(1-x)-1 to break even. So the market goes down 10.0% one day and then up 11.1% the next, an investor in the normal 1x is back to where they started. A 2x investor is still down and a 3x investor is down even more. So the average daily noise of the market kills you.

> So the market goes down 10.0% one day and then up 11.1% the next, an investor in the normal 1x is back to where they started. A 2x investor is still down and a 3x investor is down even more.

Can you explain why that is? I would have expected that your gain or loss from the leverage funds relates only to the difference in price between when you purchased and when you sold (multiplied by the leverage).

The leveraged funds like TQQQ reset their leverage on a daily basis.

the leverage amounts typically "reset" daily (not always; read the prospectus) so if you lose 10% (say $100 => $80) at 2x your day 2 base is $80; a 10% gain that day would average out to 0 on net but you would gain 20% of $80 => $96

Because of the triple leverage, a 33.33% drop would entirely wipe out the fund. Back to $0. A 33% drop in a single day has never happened (1987 Black Monday was 22%) but it definitely does happen if you consider a longer time frame.

Hence why it's reset daily, as the other two responses explain.

And in case it's not been made clear enough: it's the very opposite of a sound investment. It's very much a risk management / trading instrument. It's something you would trade as a hedge or leg of a complex trade; not something you want to hold by itself.

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