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SOXL offers a marginally lower expense ratio than SPXL, but both sit at the high end for exchange-traded funds. SPXL’s yield is marginally higher, but considering that both of these ETFs are short-term investments, fees and yield may not be the primary factors to consider-which is, of course, why they still exist despite otherwise conflicting with common sense.1

FDVV? It’s a sector-constrained show-off, carefully hand-picking its favorite sectors-think of it like a diet where you only eat kale and carrots, ignoring everything else that might make it more interesting. Meanwhile, VYM? It’s more of a broad, rules-based index guy-a bit of a stats nerd, just tracking a bunch of high-yield stocks with the consistency of your annoying uncle who always shows up for holidays, uninvited but somehow indispensable.

QQQ, with its NASDAQ-100 leash, is a creature of the digital dawn, its pulse quickened by the electric hum of technology. VOO, tethered to the S&P 500, breathes the air of a more measured age, where the weight of centuries rests on its shoulders. To compare them is to weigh a meteor’s flash against the steady glow of a lantern-both light, but at the cost of different shadows.

Since 1948, this awkward social situation has occurred exactly three times: 2023-2024, 1995-1996, and 1984-1985. Imagine going to a family reunion and finding out your cousin’s new fiancé is literally the same person who spilled wine on your white couch in 1985. That’s three strikes of a particular economic oddity.

These two actors, destined for the frenzied acrobatics of aggressive traders, intend to deliver triple and double the daily performance of their respective indices-one a broad cast of stalwart blue chip stocks, the other a tantalizing, tech-obsessed tableau. But ah! What a performance of volatility and caprice! For all their loud ambitions, they are but marionettes, tethered to the cruel strings of risk and the relentless reset of leverage-features that turn gains into fleeting whispers and losses into tragic farces. The question, my dear reader, is whether such spectacle is worthy of your theater funds or a tribute to hubris.

Both ETFs stretch their portfolios across the broad tapestry of U.S. small-cap stocks, yet beneath this pleasantry lie diverging architectures: different indexes, dissonant compositions, and risk profiles that astrologers in the market might equate with polar constellations. As a historian of commerce, I find these distinctions more than mere statistics; they are the sedimentary layers of a narrative that dates back to the nascent days of the market’s infancy. For those contemplating this duel, the details below serve as a cryptic map-sometimes illuminated, sometimes shadowed-of which ETF might serve as the Trojan horse of your investment strategy.