Why You Need Leveraged ETFs for Long-Term Investing — IF You Find the Optimal Leverage! (2024)

FAQs

Are leveraged ETFs good for long-term? ›

Bottom Line on Leveraged ETFs

Leveraged ETFs decay due to the compounding effect of daily returns, volatility of the market and the cost of leverage. The volatility drag of leveraged ETFs means that losses in the ETF can be magnified over time and they are not suitable for long-term investments.

Historical data shows that 2X leverage has been optimal for various indexes over extended periods. The optimal leverage is directly proportional to the ratio of returns to the square of volatility.

Because they reset each day, leveraged and inverse ETFs typically are inappropriate as an intermediate or long-term investment. They may be appropriate, however, if recommended as part of a sophisticated trading or hedging strategy that will be closely monitored by a financial professional.

Since they maintain a fixed level of leverage, 3x ETFs eventually face complete collapse if the underlying index declines more than 33% on a single day. Even if none of these potential disasters occur, 3x ETFs have high fees that add up to significant losses in the long run.

The big advantage with ETFs is they offer an unmatched choice of assets, markets, and risk levels. That means there is probably an ETF to match your long-term needs at whatever life stage you are at. ETFs can help you build a strong foundation for your long-term investment portfolio.

If you're confident about an investment, leverage allows you to invest more than you otherwise could and potentially enhance your profits. In addition, some investors may choose a leveraged approach to assist with their cash flow management.

Market risk

The single biggest risk in ETFs is market risk. Like a mutual fund or a closed-end fund, ETFs are only an investment vehicle—a wrapper for their underlying investment. So if you buy an S&P 500 ETF and the S&P 500 goes down 50%, nothing about how cheap, tax efficient, or transparent an ETF is will help you.

Leveraged ETFs use derivatives to multiply returns on an index by ratios like 2:1 or 3:1. Inverse-leveraged ETFs track an index in reverse. Single-stock leveraged ETFs use derivatives to track a single stock instead of an index or asset class.

Using leverage can result in much higher downside risk, sometimes resulting in losses greater than your initial capital investment. On top of that, brokers and contract traders often charge fees, premiums, and margin rates and require you to maintain a margin account with a specific balance.

What is the best leverage for $100000? ›

In the markets of forex, the common leverage used is 100:1, considered high. What this essentially means is that for each $1,000 in your trading account, you are permitted to trade till $100,000 of currency value. There is no need to fear leverage as long as you know how it can be managed.

Being overleveraged typically leads to a downward financial spiral resulting in the need to borrow more. Companies typically restructure their debt or file for bankruptcy to resolve their overleveraged situation. Leverage can be measured using the debt-to-equity ratio or the debt-to-total assets ratio.

The majority are double-leveraged, but there's a sizeable group of triple-leveraged ETFs. For professional investors, leveraged ETFs are useful in statistical arbitrage, short-term tactical strategies, and for use as short-term hedges without the need to roll futures.

The daily rebalancing of leveraged and inverse ETFs creates a situation that for periods longer than a day or two the return of a leveraged or inverse ETF will deviate from the margin account benchmark.

Several papers have established that investors who hold these investments for periods longer than a day expose themselves to substantial risk as the holding period returns will deviate from the returns to a leveraged or inverse investment in the index.

Key Takeaways. Leveraged ETFs are exchange-traded funds that use derivatives and debt instruments to magnify the returns of a benchmark or index. Leveraged ETFs can generate returns very quickly, but they are also very risky.

The more volatile the underlying index/asset, the more value the token would lose over time, even if the benchmark is flat at the end of the year. If the index dramatically moved up and down along the way, if you purchased and kept a leveraged token, it might end up losing considerable value over time.