Some investors may have been a little too eager to buy the dip in technology stocks. November trading opened with a punishing start for traders who piled into a risky leveraged ETF to bet on a rebound in tech stocks — one session after the fund saw its biggest daily inflow in more than a year and a half. (Nasdaq-100 — Credits: MarketWatch)
On Friday, traders poured $993 million into the ProShares UltraPro QQQ (TQQQ), which aims to deliver three times the daily performance of the tech-heavy Nasdaq-100. That was the ETF’s biggest single-day haul since about $1 billion flowed in on April 7, 2025, according to FactSet data cited by MarketWatch.
TQQQ Sinks After Nasdaq-100 Fails to Hold Gains
The ETF initially bounced Monday morning, but the rally quickly faded as the Nasdaq-100 failed to hold its gains and selling pressure picked back up. TQQQ closed sharply lower after a deep 20.5% loss in October, as tech stocks struggled under renewed anxiety around the artificial-intelligence trade.
Chip stocks kicked off November in the red: the PHLX Semiconductor Index slumped 3.4% on Monday after losing more than 15% in October. Last week, the Nasdaq-100 broke through its support level of 28,875, per Fairlead Strategies founder Katie Stockton.
Leveraged Chip ETF SOXL Also Gets Burned
Traders who made leveraged bets on a turnaround in chip stocks in October also got burned. The Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF (SOXL) — which aims for 300% of the daily swings of an underlying semiconductor index — tumbled 11.5% on Monday after four straight weeks of losses, booking a nearly 48% drop in October as the chip-stock carnage exceeded the Nasdaq-100’s decline.
The episode is a reminder of how leveraged ETFs are designed around daily returns: when bets go the wrong way, traders can quickly find themselves in a hole that is difficult to climb out of.
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Source: MarketWatch — read the full story there.
