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Why is there no 2x leveraged SPMO? You can get every trend stock daily leveraged nowadays but where is a lev momentum etf?

Something new from ProShares:
https://www.proshares.com/our-etfs/leveraged-and-inverse/eqqq

QLD is about 1/3 of my total portfolio, so I will keep on eye on this one.

Introducing EQQQ

The Nasdaq-100 represents many of the market’s most innovative and growth-oriented companies. In recent years, however, its performance has become increasingly concentrated in a limited number of mega-cap stocks. Today, just 10 companies account for more than 45% of the Nasdaq-100.

For investors seeking leveraged exposure to the growth potential of Nasdaq-100 companies with less influence from the index’s largest names, we’re pleased to introduce ProShares Ultra QQQ Equal Weight (NASDAQ: EQQQ)—the only ETF designed to target 2x daily returns of the Nasdaq-100 Equal Weighted Index.

The Nasdaq-100 Equal Weighted Index holds the same securities as the market-cap-weighted Nasdaq-100, but instead of weighting them by market capitalization, it resets each company to an equal weight at each quarterly rebalance. This increases the relative influence of the index’s smaller constituents and provides exposure that is less dominated by its largest companies.

Article from The Italian Leather Sofa blog.

Summary:

The main portfolio tested was a 2x levered static mix of Global Equities, Gold, Long Treasuries, Managed Futures.

Across every percentile I tested, the safe withdrawal rate (SWR) went up when leverage was applied, even in the worst-case scenario.

If I had to boil this whole exercise down to one sentence: the original safe-withdrawal-rate research was pointed in the right direction, but it probably wasn’t bold enough.

A well-diversified portfolio gets you a long way on its own... But adding leverage on top of genuine diversification, along with a mix of inflation-reactive assets, appears to do meaningfully better.

None of this is a reason to go max leverage tomorrow. It’s a reason to take the boring, diversified, moderately-levered version of this idea more seriously than it usually gets credit for.

It's got me thinking:

• It's well accepted that we have lower SWR in the UK than the US, largely because of inflation / various not being the global reserve currency effects. The best way the hedge this is probably to hold a significant amount of inflation protected GILTs, which you can use as income during inflation-adjusted drawdowns. Using a modest amount of leverage in retirement could then be seen as a way of buying extra inflation protected GILTs, as well as any other diversifiers. This probably suits the bucket approach to retirement allocation well, and would also apply to US investors, perhaps just to a lesser extent.
• We also don't have return stacked options (other than Wisdom Tree 90/60 Equities/Bonds). And I'm not sure that a daily-reset static LETF allocation would appeal to me in retirement. But presumably this also works in general with a modest amount of leverage applied to TAA strategies. In fact, I would have thought it would work even better, since TAA also increases SWR, and this is certainly what I have found so far during backtests and reading up.
• It's weird that the leverage and additional diversifier parts of Modern Portfolio Theory are still often seen as objectively risky and imprudent, rather than it being a matter of personal risk style, despite all the data and theory behind it holding up even through worst case Monte Carlo sequence of returns. But then it took us ages to accept that diversification and index funds were a good idea, so maybe it's just that happening again and we'll get there soon!

I came across this article on the Banker on Wheels blog. I highly recommend it. It's one of the few blogs that is well researched and takes a genuinely balanced approach to simple vs active and leveraged investment approaches.

Why doesn’t anyone talks about ENDW from cambria, looks like an all weather fund of funds that is slightly leveraged, and has performed extremely well since inception

A few days ago a subscriber sent me an article where the author builds a portfolio on one of the paid strategy-tracking platforms. Three tactical strategies combined, and the combined numbers are genuinely impressive: about 16% a year since 1971 with a worst drawdown around -9%. They asked if I could add the missing piece to my site. Except it's a closed strategy. Its author gave the rules privately to the platform, the platform verified the track record, and the rules themselves stay secret. Nobody outside can implement it, including me.

So I tried the next best thing. Rebuild the whole portfolio, public rules only.

Two of the three pillars were already public anyway, Keller's Bold Asset Allocation and Hybrid Asset Allocation, both from published papers. The secret one is, by its own description, a fast momentum model: it looks at very recent returns and moves everything into bonds or cash at the first sign of trouble. The closest public strategy doing that job is Accelerating Dual Momentum, which ranks US large caps against international small caps on their last 1, 3 and 6 months, holds the winner, and steps out to long treasuries when both look weak. It switches once a month.

I weighted the three so each contributes about the same risk, which lands near 40/30/30. Result since 1993, monthly data, before costs: 14.5% a year, Sharpe 1.32, worst drawdown -9.2%, longest losing stretch 20 months. Not bad for rules anyone can read. The original reports 16.3% a year, Sharpe 1.31, worst drawdown -9.1%, from 1971 (windows aren't identical, and the 1970s flatter any backtest that includes them).

What surprised me is how exactly the risk side matched. Same Sharpe, same drawdown, almost to the decimal. The gap is all in the return: 1.8% a year. The secret strategy trades roughly 7 times more often than my monthly stand-in, and that activity apparently buys real extra return.

Could be wrong on one thing: I picked the stand-in from the closed strategy's public description. If it's doing something smarter than fast momentum, the real gap is bigger than my numbers show.

Full write-up with the correlations and what each weighting method picked: https://bestfolio.app/blog/replicating-a-closed-rules-taa-portfolio

I build BestFolio, for the record. All three strategies in the blend are public rules, so you can check every number yourself.

Would you pay 1.8% a year for rules you can actually read and audit, or rather trust the sealed version because a third party verified it?

My (admittedly naive) backtests starting from 2000 show it's comparable to 100% SP500 with half a shallower max DD and half shallower average DDs. Rebalancing makes little difference since, I am guessing, both funds sort of do internal rebalancing already.

What do you think of the composition? Any simple ways to improve it? Curious to hear thoughts by more knowledgeable people.

Was looking at semis and other tech stocks due to their volatility. Especially SOXL/S

Been testing a simple setup: 50% global eq core ETF like VT 30% SPXL 20% SOXL. SPXL is based on a fast and slow MA cross. SOXL uses a fast and slow MA cross + vol sizing. The core just stays invested. Using proxy data, the portfolio backtested at 13.5% CAGR with a max drawdown of -44.6%, compared to 7.9% CAGR and -57.1% max drawdown for buy&hold VT over the same period. Goal is basically higher upside without being fully exposed to 3x LETFs all the time. Curious what you think. Reasonable structure or too much overlap/concentration?

Been digging into this one for the past week because the flow numbers are kind of nuts. IALT launched in December 2025 and is already sitting around $4-5B AUM, making it the fastest-growing thing in the liquid alts space this year.

What it actually is?

IALT is BlackRock's attempt to package their institutional liquid-alt playbook into a single ETF. It blends two return streams: an equity market-neutral book (long/short, target roughly zero beta) and a broader multi-strategy sleeve that runs macro/rates/credit positions. The team running it is the same crew behind two existing BlackRock mutual funds — BDMIX (Global Equity Market Neutral) and BIMBX (Systematic Multi-Strategy) — so it's not a brand new strategy, just a new wrapper with a new blend. Benchmark is 3-month T-bills, no leverage in the wrapper itself, expense ratio is 0.99%, which is on the pricier side for the multistrategy ETF category (most trackers put it above the category average).

Since launch it's up low double digits YTD, max drawdown so far has been tiny (~1.5%), but that's meaningless given we're talking about 7 months of data through one specific market regime. Basically no track record yet.

Question 1: Can BDMIX/BIMBX performance history tell us anything about IALT's long-term risk/return?

I think the answer is "somewhat, as a magnitude check, but not as a real backtest."

BDMIX (inception 2016) has had a genuinely bumpy ride — a rough 2016 (down almost 7%), a stretch of near-flat years from 2018 through 2020, then a really strong run in 2023-2024 (mid-teens and low-20s annual returns). It charges 1.34%, notably more than IALT. So the "smooth uncorrelated compounder" vibe IALT is giving off in its first 7 months is not really consistent with how its own sister fund has behaved historically — BDMIX has had multi-year stretches of basically nothing.

BIMBX (inception 2015) is the more diversified, credit-heavy sleeve — mild loss in 2022 (about -3%), max drawdown around 8.7% back in the March 2020 crash, and its longer-run annualized return is closer to mid-single digits, not the double digits IALT has printed so far. It runs at 0.92%.

Neither of these is a literal 1:1 map onto IALT's blend — the weighting between the market-neutral book and the multi-strategy book is IALT's own thing, and the fee structure is different too. But directionally, I'd treat these two funds as the realistic range of outcomes: expect flat-to-negative multi-year stretches to happen eventually, expect a real drawdown bigger than 1.5% at some point, and don't anchor on the current YTD number as the steady-state expected return. If you're underwriting IALT for a long-term hold, BDMIX's 2016-2020 stretch is probably the more honest mental model than its 2023-2024 stretch.

Question 2: Can IALT replace DBMF in a stacked/leveraged portfolio?

This is the part I'd push back on. They're not doing the same job.

DBMF is pure trend-following. Its payoff is convex by design — it's built to catch sustained directional moves in any asset class, which is exactly why it worked in 2022 when stocks and bonds sold off together. That "crisis alpha" behavior — making money specifically during the kind of drawdown that also hurts your leveraged equity sleeve — is the whole reason people stack it next to UPRO/TQQQ/etc. in the first place.

IALT's market-neutral core is built to target zero beta, not negative beta. It's designed to be uncorrelated day to day, not to spike specifically when equities and bonds crash together. A market-neutral book can absolutely lose money in a systemic deleveraging event (crowded factor unwinds happen), whereas a trend follower is structurally positioned to catch that exact move once the trend establishes. Different risk engines, different reason for existing in the portfolio.

So my take: IALT is not a drop-in replacement for DBMF if the reason you own DBMF is tail-risk offset for a leveraged equity sleeve. It could make sense as a third uncorrelated return stream sitting alongside DBMF/CTA/KMLM in a diversified stack, but if you swapped DBMF out for IALT expecting the same crisis-alpha behavior in the next 2022-style event, I wouldn't count on it — that's not the job this strategy was designed to do, and it hasn't been tested through a real one yet.

Other stuff worth flagging before anyone sizes this up

7 months of live history, launched into a fairly benign environment for the strategy — no real stress test yet

0.99% fee is not cheap for something benchmarked to T-bills

AUM went from zero to ~$5B in under a year, which raises capacity questions for the market-neutral/alpha side of the strategy — crowding can compress the exact edge that's attracting the money

Manager tenure on IALT itself is obviously short since it's brand new, even though the underlying team has a longer history via BDMIX/BIMBX

I get why Equities+Gold (GDE) and Equities+Futures (RSST) are things - you try to get the benefit of the movement of both.

But what is the advantage of funds that combine Bonds with other stuff, like Equities+Bonds (RSSB) or Futures+Bonds (RSBT).

Isn't the main point of bonds to go up slowly and safely without crashing? So what's the point of leveraging them?

Thanks...

Looking for a feedback on my 2x Leveraged Hybrid Asset Allocation (HAA) quantitative setup.

Schedule: Monthly rebalance on payday using Dr. Wouter Keller’s unweighted 13612 momentum formula: (1M + 3M + 6M + 12M) / 4.

Macro Canary Sensor: TIP(iShares TIPS Bond ETF).

If TIP > 0, buy Top-4 Equal Weight (25% each) from an 8-ticker offensive pool on positive 13612 formula, else purchase defensive tickers. If TIP <= 0, evacuate 100% to Defense (buying the Top-1 highest-scoring defensive ticker).

Defensive Tickers: BOXX (Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box ETF) RSBT (Return Stacked Bonds & Managed Futures)

4x2 Offensive Tickers (8 Tickers): A Top-4 execution mathematically guarantees I am holding at least two distinct macroeconomic regimes at all times.

1. Core U.S. Growth SSO (2x S&P 500) & QLD (2x Nasdaq-100)

2. Cyclical & Quality MVV (2x MidCap 400) & UYG (2x Financials)

3. Hard Assets DIG (2x Energy) & UGL (2x Gold)

4. Physical / Global UXI (2x Industrials) & EFO (2x MSCI EAFE)

Questions: Are there any glaring factor overlap issues or better alternative tickers for this 4x2 matrix?

​Is 30-day EOM rebalancing too slow for sudden flash crashes before the TIP canary triggers an exit?

Appreciate any feedback.

Additional info: Not subjected to capital gains tax, but 30% dividend wht.

Disclaimer: Formatted with AI

This portfolio is run at a further 1.33 - 2x dynamic LVR based on portfolio value relative to household cashflow, entirely funded by a Euro carry trade so long as the delta between US and Euro rates remain viable; using an IBKR wholesale / professional grade account.

I'd recommend it to anyone starting out in LETFs as a way to get into them gently without taking on too much risk.

The most interesting part of putting this portfolio together I found two things:

1. In an inflationary / rate shock environment like now, bonds, equities, gold and even potentially trend for a while all go bad together. You need true diversifiers like long / short / value rotation etc to do well - these are missing from even many very modern portfolios.
2. RSSY is pretty bad, too beta, maybe has a place as a tiny sleeve or in lower leveraged portfolios, occassionally it diversifies your return in flat boring markets, but it potentially doubly slams you in a crisis, sometimes even worse than straight levered equities would. Can you imagine being massively short yen in a crash?
3. I really like the super alts, ILS & IALT, but without the capital efficiency it's hard to justify having them in large amounts. CAOS is really the only unlevered asset class you can justify having much of because of just how well it does in a fast crash before trends respond.

Picture this.

You’ve got a great list of diversifiers. Trend, gold, bonds, maybe even STRIPS.

But you want something like 100% equity or even 110-120% equity.

This sub always goes for leverage, of course. We use SSO or UPRO to get us there.

Take the famous 60/20/20 SSO/ZROZ/GLD portfolio vs just 100% SPY.

Or return stacked funds like RSST.

But what I am having a really hard time understanding is why we don’t talk about more volatile equity funds more often. For example, couldn’t you just use *less* of QLD vs SSO as your equity allocation?

Or consider my original question. Why not just SPMO and less SSO/UPRO?

The backtest is unreal:

https://testfol.io/?s=4hSoSLCxHFT

The performance is so much different with lower drawdowns that you could use SPMO and replace a significant amount of leveraged equity.

Even 2007-2009… it crushes with lower drawdowns:

https://testfol.io/?s=5eGPXCp5ruG

Can someone help me understand why this isn’t more popular?

whats your pick for long term?

qld vs tqqq

upro vs sso

soxl vs usd

reason for your pick

Holders of $LCDL will not receive anything despite LCID recovering later on.

GraniteShares announced that the fund's NAV turned negative after LCID's sharp decline triggered the swap counterparty to close all positions, as outlined in the fund's prospectus. With the NAV at approximately -$0.016 per share, no assets remain, meaning investors will receive $0 when the ETF is liquidated. Trading has been halted, and the fund is in the process of being delisted.

Although LCID has since recovered, that rebound has no impact because the leveraged positions were already closed at a total loss. This serves as a reminder that daily 2x single-stock ETFs are intended for short-term trading and can lose their entire value even if the underlying stock later recovers.

Which one should be sold first?

Not a sophisticated stock trader here and not planning to get sophisticated.

SOXL side - the moment it hyped beyond 20 times of the last base price (set in April 2025), I knew something was extremely wrong here.

SOXS side - experienced a lot of horror by holding since beginning of May, but decided to patiently add fund during ATL.

My backtest-window post earlier this week got a fair pushback: fine, the window hides things, but show the actual numbers. So here they are, for the momentum case specifically, since half the ETF subs are currently loading SPMO as a defensive core.

The visible record is genuinely good. Since its 2015 launch SPMO did about 19.6% a year against 14.9% for SPY with a slightly shallower max drawdown, and it fell less in both covid and 2022. If your sample starts in 2015, momentum looks like free lunch.

Extend the sample and I promise it stops being free. Ken French's top-decile momentum portfolio runs back to the 1920s: the winners fell roughly 48% through the dotcom bust, 51% through the GFC, about 70% in 1929-32, worst drawdown near 76%. A long-only momentum fund never de-risks... it rotates within equities, carries full beta the whole way down, then eats the momentum crash at the bottom when the destroyed names rip and the winners keep sinking. None of that fits inside an eight-year live record, which is my whole point about windows.

For levered folks I'd say the implication is direct: a momentum sleeve is a return engine, and levering a return engine without a separate exit rule just scales the part the backtest can't see. Full writeup with the tables: https://bestfolio.app/blog/spmo-core-holding-momentum-crash-record (founder disclosure, it's my site).

Still curious what people concluded from the last thread... did anyone actually stress their levered sleeves through pre-2010 regimes, or is the window still doing the heavy lifting?

does anyone still use the Juda’s swing and is it still profitable? Do you trade it on FX or futures? London session or NY session?

Kind of brainstorming here. I own a bunch of FNGU.

Since FNGU is an ETN it got me searching for a similar ETF that doesn’t include credit risk of the issuer.

Let’s say someone has a $60,000 portfolio. I think owning $20,000 FNGU and $40,000 cash would be very similar to owning $30,000 FNGG and $30,000 cash. Without the credit risk.

Am I overlooking anything.

Anyone managed to replicated GDE in europe with similar fee?