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If I'm long the index and believe they will go up long term, why would it be a bad idea to buy SSO and QLD that are 2x the index?
If I'm long the index and believe they will go up long term, why would it be a bad idea to buy SSO and QLD that are 2x the index?
Does anyone hedge their portfolios with inverse ETFs?
If investing into snp500 is common advice, with back tests and all, then why not 2x leveraged snp500?
ElizaOS ai16z is back with a bang, soon to be launching ElizaCloud service.
Good news and big moves on deck for AI16Z ElizaOS. The new ElizaCloud.
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RenovoRx: The Microcap Biotech with a Big Shot at Changing Cancer Treatment
ETF portfolio review: Trying to be aggressive for 15 year timeframe
The downtrend resumes tomorrow, you had your little bounce now the bears are in charge.
RenovoRx: The Microcap Biotech with a Big Shot at Changing Cancer Treatment
YOLO’d into SSO + QLD + TSMX at 27. My retirement plan is vibes and semiconductors.
thinkorswim - Stop Wasting Money & Don't Fall for the Price Defaults
Can anyone explain why SSO and SPUU produce their (similar) gains in totally different ways?
VOO vs SSO- which one is good for long term investment?
I locked myself in a box spread and levered myself at 3.33x on SPY/QQQ
~$18k gains, holding for a few months since the low. ignore the -100% its an error, hopefully ; )
How to balance long term leveraged/unleveraged ETFs
Is this what Elon said he was looking for?
Dip Buying BackTesting - SPY & QQQ with Leveraged Accounts
Active Health Foods! NEW COMPANY BUY QUICK!
If you're young and have a very long investment horizon, then investing in stocks using leverage DECREASES your risk
If I put half my money into the SPY and half my money into SSO (2x leveraged spy) - would this be the same as 1.5x leverage?
TQQQ - The perfect ETF for a strong bull market
Debunking the "Leveraged ETFs Are Not a Long-Term hold" myth. Big backtest
$RECAF.....last huge oil deposit
What do you think about leveraged ETFs, are be-weekly refreshed ETFs even a thing ?
ATDS Lands New Contract, Revenues Keep Increasing
Canadian LPs WILL be allowed in the US markets *WHEN* MSOs are allowed to uplist. $APHA/TLRY 🚀🚀🚀
Mentions
fair points! but u still missing the critical time-to-deploy, systemic bottlenecks, and orbital mechanics scale. The issue with nuclear is time and bureaucracy. Building a new nuclear plant in the West takes 10 to 15+ years due to regulatory approvals, supply chain bottlenecks, massive capital costs (e.g., Vogtle Units 3 & 4 in Georgia took 14 years and over $30B). AI compute demand is doubling every few months, if u gonna wait 15 year, u already lost the race. Even if you build a nuclear plant, you still have to connect it to the grid. High-voltage transmission lines take 7–10 years**.** Not to mention the billions of gallons of water for cooling towers**.** Nuclear is robust but it doesn't solve the immediate 5-year bottleneck. On Earth, you face massive land-use battles, municipal water consumption limits, and grid bottlenecks. In orbit, deployment requires zero land permits, zero transmission lines, and zero municipal water table draw. The advantage is significant. There is no overcrowding. The orbit is way emptier than u imagine.SSO isn't a single thin track, it’s an altitude shell hundreds of kilometers thick. U can actually put compute clusters in High Earth Orbit or Earth-Sun Lagrange points, where you get 100% continuous solar illumination and effectively limitless physical space with zero orbital traffic
They dont actually have to be data intense. LLMs operate on text and require on the order of kilobytes per second in each direction as long as all the weights are stored on the sat. They will probably put them in SSO so they are always in sunlight and still in LEO. So yea they won't maintain them, they will dispose of them like starlink. My guess is they will target a 5 year life for gen 1 and 10 years for all further gens. Starship makes station keeping fuel mass cheap so theres nothing stopping them keeping them for longer
I've been all in SSO (2x SPY) for over two years now. Up 71% versus 52% for QQQ and 42% for SPY. I've had A LOT of FOMO over this period but I think this is an underrated and uncomplicated investment strategy for someone with a long investing time frame.
Hey casino, if I wanted to go aggressive on a side IRA, would you do 50/50 UPRO/SGOV with volatility rebalance or 75/25 SSO/SGOV?
just redid my Roth shifting into leverage and futures instead of momentum RSSB NTSD DBMF GDMN SSO QLD
I always get confused why everyone suddenly treats it like a game where the S&P500 as the bar. If that's the case folks should just do the following: 1. VOO + 10% margin 2. 90% VOO + 10% SSO 3. 90% VOO + 10% QQQ 4. 90% VOO + 10% 1 stock that outperforms it 5. 90% VOO + 10% VOO LEAPs 6. VOO with you running CC 0% APR promo arbitrage 7. 90% VOO + 10% ES futures 8. 100% VOO + selling far OTM puts 9. 100% VOO + selling far OTM calls 10. Any combinations of the above. Then you'll ALWAYS beat the S&P500, but let's not fucking dick ride an index or VOO like it's the end all be all of investment. If anything, you're just running over weighting US in a period where the US has seen heavy out performance. Treating VOO like some holy grail over VT is no better than those guys treating QQQ has a some holy grail over VOO. Let's all just delete our accounts, turn off our brains, and 100% auto invest everything into VOO! /s
That absolutely behaves the same way as a hypothetical SSO that's 1.25x using the same rebalancing technique
Fun fact: Best stock is QLD, 2x QQQ. Second best stock is SSO, 2x SPY. 3x leveraged ETFs may bankrupt you during black swan events.
SSO and QLD are examples of realistic long hold leveraged ETFs. Not every leveraged fund is garbage.
Bought SSO and QLD on this dip.
Something like SSO is a bad idea at current valuations. You want something like that after a decline like Liberation Day
Single stocks are going to be more risky than putting it in something like SSO which is 2x the S&P. You could go with UPRO, which is 3x, if you use some form of entrance/exit strategy. Single stock leveraged funds are quite risky, especially something like MUU that’s already seen a massive run. I consider them riskier than even a 3x like UPRO or TQQQ.
SSO, GDX, FXAIX. Once SSO and GDX get called away, SPMO, QQQM and VONG are my next largest I think.
I think individual stock picking is a fun and intellectually stimulating exercise, but it is something I do only with money I can afford to lose. The real wealth-building engine in our family’s accounts is a retirement fund with monthly allocations to passive indexes. Diversified index ETFs are unlikely to give you the >100% yearly returns of a lucky tech stock, but they minimize idiosyncratic risk and maximize your probability of a superior risk-adjusted return. Your net worth is significant enough that you can arguably take on more risk and accept a longer-term investment horizon (assume you haven’t scaled your cost of living up to match your impressive savings), but that is arguably also done optimally via boring passive ETFs, just tilted toward more risk (eg heaviler concentration toward VGT or VOO, or even a mildly levered fund like SSO if you have the willpower to ignore drawdowns and continue contributing them). I think the main reason to hand over your investment decisions to another person is self-knowledge that you will be compelled to trade emotionally. If that is the case, find a reasonably priced financial advisor or wealth fund manager and pay them to invest for you. But otherwise- it’s awesome that you’ve been so fortunate, and I would suggest taking your winnings from idiosyncratic risk investments and diversifying to mitigate future risk.
We’ve all heard the advice “VOO and chill”, but why not the levered SSO and chill? If I’m holding it in a retirement account for 20-30 years, the likelihood that the market will be down over that long of a horizon is minimal. So why not? Is me dumb?
Two things to address before picking the structure, plus a sanity check on whether options is the right vehicle at all. First, your 72% win rate is on the underlying hitting 1%, not on your option P&L being positive. If SPY hits 1.0% on Tuesday and closes Friday up 0.6%, an ATM call you bought Monday may still be down on theta. Rerun the backtest on actual option P&L, not the underlying hit rate. That's the metric that decides everything. Second, your edge is directional, not vol. Naked ATM calls expose you to both, which is wasteful. Bull call spread (buy ATM, sell at your +1% hurdle target) isolates the directional bet from the vol bet. Use the weekly that expires Friday, not 30DTE. Your forecast horizon is one week; a 30DTE option has 3 weeks of theta you paid for but won't use. Sanity check on the bigger question. Your Scalper avg return is 0.33% of the underlying. After option mechanics that's maybe 5-8% on premium, before commissions and bid-ask. The Holder variant gets 0.58% but the win rate drops to 58% which is barely above baseline 57%. There's a real chance the model's edge gets eaten by option transaction costs at this magnitude. Worth running a parallel backtest on SHARES with leverage (SSO or UPRO) and comparing net Sharpe before committing to options at all.
Held SSO for the first 6 months of this year sold for 17% gain. Ported to QLD hoping for a 20% gain in the second half of the year. Held a sizeable 2X NBIS since last year and will hold it until 2031 no DCA.
During Covid I sold some of my VOO and QQQ and instantly bought SSO, SPXL, QLD and TQQQ. Rode it way up and way down into the bear of 2022 which was a gut-wrenching ride. I bought more in Dec 2022 and have’t looked back. This isn’t for the risk averse for sure. But it can be a roadmap for anyone to deal with dramatic downturns. I’d just recommend selling the leveraged etfs once you’ve recovered if you can’t sleep at night taking that much risk (SOXL was another great one bought during the tariff tumult surrounding liberation day, currently up 14x)
Just short btc and go long QQQ , SSO, CHPY. cannot lose money
Bought SSO at close. Looking for a bounce for a few hours at least. Lets get some green shoots in the morning!
You can trade it, or you can make money above the 2x or 3x daily multiple investing long-term. Tell me why TQQQ and QLD or UPRO and SSO are far above 3x and 2x gains, respectively above their underlying index for the same timeframe
This is very WSB-coded of me, I am not smart, but my Roth is 100% SSO and it’s still up 9% YTD
Well Nasdaq100 isn't getting nothing for it. SpaceX will list on Nasdaq rather than NYSE. Such an arrangement is to be expected during a Trump admin with a lot business quid-pro-quo already going on in Washington. Some in the ETF/LETF community swear by QQQ/TQQQ saying it's just the "better" version of VOO/SSO/PRO akin to how US investors say VOO is just superior "back tested performance" VT. I always felt I'm getting "enough" returns with the VOO and any extra I need I can get from margin, leverage, and/or options. Either way, not my problem since my CHAD-VOO/SSO/GOOG/GOOGL/BAC will be dumping SpaceX onto QQQ-virgins.
VOO/SSO/GOOG/GOOGL/BAC are some of my largest positions. I don't have QQQ since I'm already overweight tech. Instead I have leverage Russell2k. Etrade/MS offered me to join the SpaceX IPO but I didn't sign up. Already go indirect exposure long ago.
Full port SSO on margin might be the best strategy
Park your money into something safe like SSO while the market crashes
Any more insight than that? It is skewed tech because I’m still bullish on AI and I might switch to SSO in my taxable where I don’t use a 200 SMA to rotate out of the leveraged ETF.
I hold SSO long term. I don’t buy it all the time, though.
Bears are back in control after I sold my SSO at record price. I'm liquid now and monitoring the situation. Should I support the bears a lil?
Sold at my SSO at the peak today and ready to move into QLD. But looks like the bears might be coming. Should I take a chill first and monitor?
With that logic might as well buy SSO then, at least that’s what I’m doing :)
Of course in-house software needs ongoing support an maintenance, but the point is that effort is far less than the contract. You do a cost-benefit analysis before bringing it in-house. Many paid software tools you only pay for because critical enterprise features like SSO are not available on open source equivalents. You can just add those features yourself now.
I just bought the whole market at the aftermath of the 2008 crash. Once in a lifetime opportunity it was a no-brainer. SSO from 150K to millions.
I get the consumer UX frustration, but this massively undersells Microsoft’s actual moat. MSFT isn’t winning because Windows settings are beautiful, its winning because Entra ID, M365, Intune, Defender, Azure, Purview, Teams and Power Platform are deeply embedded in enterprise IT workflows. In real companies, identity, device compliance, Conditional Access, SSO, endpoint management, email , security and governance all tie together. That ecosystem is incredibly hard to replace. Microsoft definitely ships messy UX and half-finished products sometimes, but “Outlook is annoying” is not really the core investment thesis. The enterprise platform lock-in is.
Go to r/letfs. And recognize that decay is amplified by both borrowing costs and beta/volatility. I personally like SSO and UPRO best for LETFs. I haven’t backtested your strategy and have no specific opinion on it.
The entire post is about how even in SSO there are eclipses.
If you want leverage QLD and SSO are very good options
I know an accredited investor who has multiple 7figs. They don't have allocations to those either outside of their VOO/SSO/GOOG/BAC/MSFT shares. Easiest way to get exposure is via GOOG/BAC (SpaceX), MSFT/AMZN/NVDA/9984 (OpenAI), and CRM/ZM (Anthropic). Then if you own VOO/SSO/UPRO or QQQs which owns many of these companies then you'll have some indirect exposure to these companies by proxy as well. Alternatively there are a few etfs that let you get exposure by proxy too.
Honestly I think you’re overthinking it a bit for only 125% exposure lol. Futures always sound amazing until the IRA cash rules start making the math uglier in real life. LEAPS also get more annoying over time than people admit with rolling/spreads/etc. VOO + a bit of SSO is probably the least stressful answer honestly. Volatility drag matters way more when people start going crazy with leverage.
A lot of people underestimate how tricky leverage gets inside retirement accounts. Futures look super capital efficient on paper, but once brokers force you to hold a chunk in non-yielding cash, the “cheap leverage” story changes fast. LEAPS can work too, but long-term option pricing + spreads + rolling costs make the real carry harder to estimate than most people think. Honestly for moderate leverage like 1.25x on the US stock market, mixing something like VOO + a smaller allocation to SSO is probably the cleanest approach. Yes, volatility drag exists, but at lower leverage and very long holding periods it’s often less destructive than people fear — especially compared to execution mistakes or complexity from futures/options. The biggest edge for long-term investors is usually simplicity + staying invested consistently. Check out my profile for more.
Just buy 80% SPY and 20% UPRO and you will beat SPY without the concentration risk. Or full port SSO, you’ll have the same volatility and drawdowns as all these meme stock picks but good long term returns. Or QLD if you want tech, its better then 100% in just 8 tech names. If you asked this question in 1999 people would have told you to buy JDSU, CSCO, INTC, QCOM, WCOM, SUNW, DELL, ORCL. Some went to zero, some were dead money for 10-20 years.
But what if the stonk market crashes! Gasp! 😱 /s Ok you little shit…here’s the everything bagel; 10% each…( GLD IBIT TLT USFR VTI VXUS SSO SPYI ANGL PDBC)
maybe SSO for a slight edge and some dividend ETF.
Jesus Fucking Christ. I held SSO since 2009 and thought I am the boss.
Yeah should have got some QLD WITH SSO
I have 935k in my portfolio (100% SSO) and 480k of that is long-term capital gains. That's around 87k in taxes where I live
I went all in on Goldman Sachs during the fiscal crisis for 50k, sold at the bottom down 30k, made it all back by flipping to SSO, leveraged S&P 500. Don’t put more than 5% in any one stock
Margin call isn't the only thing that could go wrong? What if stocks just flatline? You're paying 5% interest a year for that? Like others said leveraged ETF is probably the way to go. Expense ratio isn't even bad, like 1% fees on SSO.
That's why you go 1-3x Russell 2000 with IWM/UWM/TNA to cover you bases on TQQQ/QQQ, UPRO/SSO, or whatever megacaps you have.
This. My portfolio was already heavily overweight GOOG/GOOGL during last year's Alphabet dip. That's before my SSO/VOO so I couldn't force myself to buy more even when I believed in it. I really do feel MSFT this year is like GOOG last year. Difference is Gemini is beating OpenAi and MSFT got thrown out with the SaaSpocolyse bathwater. I rather risk being wrong than missing the same boat twice.
At your age I would consider buying SPX (or ETF equivalent) and SSO, maybe half and half. I don't think SPXL is a good idea personally. Basically hold the SPX until 10 years before retirement and then move 10-15% of it annually into bonds or something less risky until you're about 50% SPX and 50% conservative item. The SSO you hold for at least 15 years, but if there is a crash you have to add 5, 10, or 15 more years to it. Basically with the leveraged one the key is just to get out of it at some point when you're up after 15 years or some other relatively long time. You could hold it longer but I think this is a good approach. Or you could just skip the SSO and do SPX, but I think 2x leverage or less is basically OK.
The math isn't wrong but the assumption is. 100:1 leverage means a 1% move against you wipes your entire position. A 15% drawdown tolerance doesn't apply here — you'll get margin called long before that. Brokers close leveraged positions automatically, they don't let you "wait it out." The war on Iran example is exactly the kind of event that causes massive overnight gaps. Markets can drop 5-8% in a single candle before you can react. At 100:1 that's game over before you even wake up. If you want leveraged S&P exposure, 2x or 3x ETFs (like SSO or UPRO) are brutal enough for most people. 100:1 on $5000 is not investing, it's gambling with a margin call timer running in the background.
No one knows about supply shocks but if I had to guess? Probably look for the high quality among the cheapies (Mag8 dips, MSFT among Saaspolocypse, LVMH/NKE to play the rebounds instead of say TPR, strong industrials like DAL if it dips), inflation hedges like gold if it's below $4k or pricing power strength via AXP/V/MA on better PE valuations, probably deleveraging from UPRO to SSO and SSO to VOO now, commodities might be good but it's too hard to guess, RE if you can afford it, and probably don't hold too much cash but if you do then probably just a small amount in ST notes. I think this cause I see inflation coming down the pipeline.
I use Google for SSO personally. I'd never in a million years use Facebook for that. I don't anyone who uses Facebook anymore.
Honestly. It's a requirement these days. They've centered themselves into every SSO possible. Basically Facebook is your authentication to all these other apps. Easier than managing another password i won't remember. I hate it. But it was a genius move to stay relevant.
At 19 I'd be putting all my money in QQQ or VTI or VT for the next 30 years. If the market crashes in the next few years put half of it into SSO
Agreed. My limited backtesting with a focus on sub-optimal periods indicates that 1.5x-2x SPY is the way. This can be achieved with half VOO, half SSO, but is a bit more efficient to just use margin.
all depends on your goal; set and forget? VT. Want a lil nuance? VT/IBIT/USFR....want to crank it up a notch? SSO/KMLM/IBIT. Want some yolo-fueled inspired AI-maxing-goon-ascending hocus-pocus? YOU. The S&ME500. You work on increasing your skills and savings rate, which will dramatically help you more than finding the "next big strategy". Until your account is massive, your savings rate is more important than your asset quality....but if you insist on lighting money on fire, TECL/BITX/TMF in October and sit in USFR until then.
Personally I think as a younger person (me too), a leveraged fund or two is cool as well. I buy a decent amount of SSO and TQQQ. 2x SP500, 3x Invesco QQQ. I also like slightly growthier stuff, I saw VOO mentioned, consider VOOG as well maybe too. A split of value and growth funds, maybe with some leverage is the recipe I've been happy with as I've started investing (started in '21 too but I am definitely not in the red)
You’re a pussy if you invest in SSO or ZROZ. Real men DCA in TQQQ. You got soft hands brother
You can get away with it with 2x (though I would not be buying now) SP500. Volatility decay is real, but overstated. At 3x or more, or with most other underlyings, the wheels fall off. Margin is usually better due to no daily. I held SSO through the last dip and still came out green. If downturns are really bad (2001, 2008), it takes you longer to break even than it would have if you held the 1x underlying. Most people will paperhand the dips.
You’re a pussy if you invest in SSO or ZROZ. Real men DCA in TQQQ. You got soft hands brother
I did do it a couple weeks ago by going all in on QLD and SSO which lead to a 15% gain on both. Around 30k gain I recall. The data suggests that I hold this no matter how hard it drops and stick to my investment plan of gradually de-leveraging it.
I went all in with QLD and SSO the week before and had a 15% gain on both
As the optimal leverage of the S&P 500 is between 2x-2.5x, I'll gradually invest into SSO to dilute my portfolio's total leverage.
OP is not accounting for margin interest drags though. Unless you have the IKBR 6% rate or better it's likely not worth it compared to a leveraged etf like SSO.
SSO, UPRO for SP. People use QLD and TQQQ for the Q’s, but I don’t mess with those.
Interesting. I tuned down leverage a bit by selling some SSO (down to my typical 40% allocation) to store gains in VOO and VXUS back in January and put on BX 9/18 130 and 135 strike calls in Feb. When things feel toppy, I generally get out of picked stocks and tune leverage down, but stay fully invested.
But my returns have been better than average since I also hold some leveraged etfs (SSO, QLD, UYG, ERX and SOXL), and my single stocks are in growing tech driven sectors.
My approach is: 1. Always be buying index positions. 2. 40% SSO, 20% VXUS, store the rest in VOO until opportunities arise. 3. I only use single stock positions for 1-7ish month trades. I look for earnings strength, with underperformance relative to the index, based on what I consider to be an overreactive narrative. I’m happy to buy on the way down/into decline and wait for the position to work.
Sold some VOO to buy more SSO.
Crypto isn't a safe haven though, it's literally the exact opposite. If you think the market is going to crash, you should have exactly 0$ in crypto. It's effectively 2x leveraged play(SSO).
Sell it all, buy TQQQ. /s Nah but for real buy SSO
I bought, but very light… AMZN, NVDA, AIRJ, SSO, IBM, LLY, SOFI, ASML, BK. And when I say light, I mean light. Figure it’s DCA time. The market is basically almost back to where it was and I don’t see it dropping much further. If you include an inflationary factor of 2.4% for the past year, the amount of devaluation of your dollar, the S&P is up about 9.6%, the NSDQ is up about 18.5% and the DJIA is up about 8.5%. I believe that’s a reasonable point to DCA.
VOO, SSO, & a little UPRO. scale larger buys the more the market drawsdown
SSO, TQQQ, and GDMN. Learn to swing
Have 300k what should I buy? I was thinking SSO 2X s&p
LEAPS on TQQQ. I like it. I've been selling CSP on TQQQ at $35, 30, and 25 so no wsb fame for me... but at least i'm farming premium and tossing that into SSO on the way down.
About fifteen years after two large reversals in GS and BA. GS was during financial crisis as I bought 10k clips every 10% down. I eventually ate that loss and flipped it all to SSO making up the 20k+ loss. BA was a decade later trading it between $300-$400. I made great money flipping it for a year and then the bottom fell out. Now I’m lame, just trade macro news using ETFs and only individuals for sport. Except shorting the Vix…I’ve been real close to violating the 5% total net worth number on that play. 10k short right now using Svix and Vxx.
I put 150K on SSO in 2009 and haven't sold a share. You can do the math.
A lot are cloud hybrid. They have a cloud footprint but maintain a DC for a lot of their environments. They will have a mix of services based on cost and convenience. For example, source control. It is much cheaper to have a hundred devs on locally hosted GitLab then switch to Azure Dev Ops. Right at 3x the money. So SSO is managed in AWS or Azure but the dev environment is hosted in a DC. Things that require heavy compute like a DB or K8 cluster are avoided because you can get way more compute cycles per dollar and more accurately predict your expenses, if you host it yourself. With VMWare increasing licenses by 400% it just doesn’t make financial sense to keep everything in DC. Not only do you eliminate cost but also the extra overhead of Disaster Recovery or geolocation redundancy. That also leads to a headcount reduction. Sorry this is so long!
The issue isn’t whether the index goes up long term, it’s how it gets there. Leveraged ETFs like SSO and QLD reset daily, so returns depend heavily on the path, not just the endpoint. In a smooth bull run, they can outperform. But if the market is volatile or sideways, that daily reset starts working against you and erodes returns over time. That’s why most people keep their core in unlevered exposure, then layer in higher growth or alternative plays like VCX separately rather than relying on leverage for long-term compounding.
You can use testfol.io As a quick summary, if you compare the performance of SPY vs SSO over the last, I thi k it was 15 years, SSO comes out winning by a far margin. If the stock market behaves like it did in that same time period, you should be fine.
Volatility drag… just read the product documentation for SSO. Proshares explains it really well
I am testing this thesis as well. I started a couple years ago. SSO and QLD is a part of my portfolio and I DCA almost equally into a basketful of tickers. So far SSO and QLD are holding up ok. The view will depend on when you enter and how long you are in so YMMV. Why not dip your toes in and make it a small part of your portfolio and see for yourself
SSO has been around since before the 2008 financial crisis so it can easily be backtested through multiple crashes. Obviously you're going to have to be ok with huge drawdowns and have a long time horizon to recover/DCA when using leverage or set a stop loss
the problem with SSO for covered calls is that you're not getting 2x the premium for 2x the risk. the options on SSO are less liquid than SPY, so the bid-ask spread eats into your yield. you might find the effective annualized yield after slippage isn't much better than just selling SPY calls with fewer shares
Using SSO for covered calls adds leverage risk. Smaller allocation helps, but losses can still amplify in a downturn.
this is what people miss about leveraged ETFs. the 2x is on daily returns, not cumulative — so in a choppy market SSO can lose money even when SPY is flat. selling CCs on top of that is basically selling vol on something that's already bleeding from vol. you're short gamma twice over. PMCCs on regular SPY give you the same leverage without the decay eating your position from the inside
the vol drag on SSO will eat into your gains way more than the premium you collect, covered calls on a leveraged etf is kinda fighting yourself tbh
The intuition is reasonable. You want covered call income on S&P exposure but can't commit $60K+ for 100 shares of SPY. But SSO introduces problems that most people don't think through until they're already in the position. **The core issue with leveraged ETFs and covered calls** SSO resets daily. That 2x leverage is on daily returns, not total returns. Over time, this creates volatility decay, where the ETF can lose value even if the S&P is flat but choppy. When you write a covered call, you're capping your upside while keeping the full downside. On a leveraged product, that downside is amplified 2x, but the premium you collect doesn't compensate for it proportionally. You end up with a structurally lopsided position: 2x the loss potential, but your call premium is based on a much cheaper underlying. It's not 2x the SPY call premium. In a sustained downturn, your shares lose value at twice the rate while your calls expire worthless (good) but you're sitting on deeply underwater shares that need the index to recover more than the percentage it dropped just to get back to even, because of the daily reset mechanics. That's the compounding trap with leveraged ETFs. **What actually works better for your situation** If the goal is covered call income on S&P exposure without $60K, you have a few options. XSP options are 1/10th the size of SPX options and are designed for exactly this. A poor man's covered call on SPY (diagonal spread) lets you buy a deep in-the-money LEAP as your "shares" and sell short-dated calls against it. Your capital outlay might be $8-12K instead of $60K, you get similar exposure, and you're not dealing with leverage decay. There are also S&P-linked ETFs that trade at lower prices without leverage. SPLG trades around $70/share, so 100 shares is roughly $7K. **If you still want to do it with SSO** It can work in a strong bull market where the daily reset actually helps you through leveraged compounding to the upside. But you need to size it as a tactical position, not a core holding. Keep it small like you said, understand that in a 20% drawdown your shares drop roughly 35-40% after decay effects, and sell calls with shorter duration (weeklies or 2-week) so you're constantly re-evaluating. Don't sell calls more than 30 DTE on a leveraged product. The decay dynamics make longer-dated covered calls increasingly unfavorable. The PMCC on SPY is probably the cleanest version of what you're actually trying to build. Same income mechanics, same exposure, no leverage decay, lower capital requirement.
You’ll get killed on a big up week assuming you’re trying to maximize premium by staying near the money. That’s the price you pay for the leverage. And in this specific case you’ll probably pay for it with bad spreads since the volume is microscopic compared to spy/qqq etc. Definitely don’t try this with SOXL. Learned the hard way with that. Daily rebalancing means the leverage doesn’t hold up in the long run. Seems to hold up with SSO though.
I'm think of full porting into SSO until SPX hits 7k.
Honestly I’ve given up on SPY options. Holding cash to dca on SSO and QLD until you know who is no longer supreme leader of America.
Cost savings, using internally built SSO
Americans actually had the lowest inflation, the most energy security, the least food insecurity, the most insulation from global chaos, the cheapest natgas AND gas prices, the best performing stock market (NVDA by itself was worth more than the marketcap of most of Europe or China/HongKong/Macau COMBINED), the strongest GDP growth, the strongest labor market, and the strongest currency by which they could use to offset inflation via travel/import. But folks here acted like we were the little starving fucking Gazan kids or freezing Ukrainian kids getting their limbs blown off by missile/drone strikes. The "vibe-cession" and "Gaza is SPEAKING!"^(notice how all those mofos disappeared day 1 after Trump took office even though shit got worse for Palestine?) Anyways: Fuck around, find out. Do dumb shit, get dumb prizes. Vote clown, get circus. Since we're WSB and not r/politics : I'll won't short the USA. Much easier to just short the dollar since GDP/inflation/devaluation/deficits are not likely to decline due to the huge national debt. Light/secured borrowing, go long assets, and diversify. SSO, UWM, VT, LVMUY, AXP, SCCO, SHEL, gold, RE if you can afford it, healthcare, financials, treasury notes or short-mid bonds (no long bonds), and the like.