About LETF Lab

LETF Lab is a free, anonymous, educational dashboard for people studying leveraged ETFs (TQQQ, UPRO, SSO, QLD, SOXL, TMF). It shows what a few widely discussed rules say today, how much daily-rebalancing decay the funds have shown, and lets you backtest a simple trend rule.

The rules (described, not recommended)

• 200-day SMA with buffer: hold the leveraged fund while the underlying index ETF (QQQ or SPY) closes above its 200-day simple moving average plus a buffer (e.g. 3–5%); move to cash/T-bills after it closes below SMA minus the buffer. The buffer reduces whipsaw; the state persists while price is inside the band.
• Drawdown from ATH: flags when TQQQ is more than 30% below its all-time (dividend-adjusted) high.
• VIX threshold: flags when the CBOE VIX closes above a level (default 30).

Volatility decay

Leveraged ETFs target N× the daily return. Over longer periods, the compounded result differs from N× the period return; in choppy markets it is usually lower ("volatility drag").

Data & method

• Source: Yahoo Finance public chart API, end-of-day, dividend/split-adjusted closes, fetched by scripts/update_data.py (Stooq CSV is attempted first but currently returns a bot check, so it is not used). T-bill yield: ^IRX (13-week).
• Simulated pre-2010 3× QQQ is a model (3× daily return − fees − financing) and is always labeled as simulated.
• If a source fails, the page says so — no data is filled in or invented.

Newsletter

"Email me when the signal flips" is a placeholder; no addresses are collected.

— LETF Lab