r/stocks•
campee

SPXL as a 10+ year hold

Advice Request

I've read about how 3x leveraged bear/inverse ETFs such as SPXS suffer from decay and slowly depreciate until the point of becoming nearly worthless, at which point they reverse split and start their depreciation anew, and you can certainly see proof of this if you look at their 1 year chart. However, the opposite seems to be true of 3x "bull" leveraged ETFs like SPXL. Of course they tank in a downturn but if you hold them for 10+ years I don't see how you're not guaranteed to make a very good return on your investment. Hell, you could have bought SPXL one year ago before March's crash/downturn and still come out ahead. If SPY and VOO are considered "safe" because the S&P 500 is practically guaranteed to appreciate in value over the long term, isn't buying like $10k worth of SPXL and not touching it for 10+ years pretty much guaranteed to net you a very good return?

Let's compare SPXL over the past 1/5 years to SPY:

SPXL 1y = +47.51%
SPXL 5y = +323.85%

SPY 1y = +27.85%
SPY 5y = +94.07%

Of course timing becomes much more relevant when you finally do decide to unload your shares, but if you hold it for 10 years you're probably going to be looking at, conservatively, a 500+% increase in value. Am I missing something?

Posted Feb 27, 2021, 8:54 AM UTC

810
Joe_Biggles•

Volatility drag

5
hardwood198•

Have a read

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-advisors/082515/why-leveraged-etfs-are-not-longterm-bet.asp

Leveraged products are good if the market continues to move in one direction. This has been so since 2008.

However, past performance is not indicative of future performance.

3
taimusrs•

I just started my experiment of holding TQQQ long term. I have read so much of those damn articles about why it's a stupid idea, but then the graph says otherwise. I hold a very small amount that I'll be fine losing if this doesn't pans out, let's see how it goes.

3
campeeOP•

Good idea. I think I'll throw $5k on that and just let it ride for a decade. +1000% over the past 5 years!

1
floppingsets•

Lol with those returns it’s usually smart to go the other direction.

1
timwaaagh•

probably interest rates. leveraged means buying stuff on loan. If interest rates go to the moon , the stock market might be going up but this would go down. Of course, inflation and interest rates have not been a big problem in the last decennia, but you never know when strong inflation might hit.

1
[deleted]•

[removed]

1
[deleted]•

[removed]

1
palehorseCSM•

SPXL had 3 splits in it's history, all forward, not reverse. ;)

1
schnookiums•

if the market tanks it goes down 80% so prob worthwhile to have a generous stop loss with a wide ass limit (that may or may not work)

1