A leveraged bet on technology has been a big winner in the bull run that began in March.
The Direxion Daily Technology Bull 3x Fund (TYH) has more than quadrupled since the March lows, outpacing the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY)which is up 59% in the same period.
Leveraged ETFs have come under fire recently as investors discovered that holding the funds for longer than one day could result in unexpected returns.
Most leveraged ETFs are designed to deliver performance for a time period of only one day. In the case of TYH, the fund seeks daily investment results of 300% of the price performance of the Russell 1000 Technology Index.
In a sideways market, the compounding effect of a single day beta can quickly cause divergence from targeted performance. However, in a trending market, the compounding effect of a daily reset can produce results that outpace the designed performance.
Since global equity markets turned up, technology stocks have been on fire, especially smaller and medium size stocks. TYH has 105 holdings with an average market cap of $19 billion.
Even more diverse is the Vanguard Information Technology ETF (VGT) which is up 70% since the March lows. VGT, which includes small, medium and large cap technology firms among its 419 holdings, has outpaced the Technology Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLK) which holds only 87 firms with a weighted average market cap of over $100 billion.
For more ETF investing choices, see the ETF Directory for a complete list of Sector ETFs.