-- DCA into the Nasdaq: should you buy Q or TQ?

-- Q annualized at 19%? Can TQ reach 34%?
-- The returns are clearly higher, but why are people still advising you not to touch $TQ ?
I personally DCA into Q, and I’ve been telling everyone that DCA into the Nasdaq is all you need—don’t go messing around.
But there’s always a thorn in my mind: is this “just do it” really the best option? Is there a more aggressive way?
Today I happened to see an article on social media that ran the numbers and pierced this question with data.
@app_sail used AI to backtest the Nasdaq over 26 full years, from 2000 to 2026. The conclusion was that simply DCA-ing into Q yields roughly 19% annualized, while switching to a dynamic leveraged strategy can reach 34%.
But when I read through the comments, I found that more than half of the people still haven’t even figured out the most basic thing: what exactly is the difference between Q and TQ. A lot of people think TQ is just Q that rises almost three times as fast—based on that understanding, they’ll eventually end up wiping themselves out...
Q is the Nasdaq 100 index fund: when the Nasdaq rises by 1, Q rises by 1. TQ is a 3x leveraged long: when it rises by 1, TQ rises by 3; and when it drops by 1, TQ drops by 3. It sounds like just 3x amplification, but what’s truly dangerous is volatility decay.
Here’s the most straightforward example. If the Nasdaq drops 10% today and rises 10% tomorrow, after that back-and-forth, Q is almost back to where it started.
For TQ, today it drops 30%; tomorrow it rises 30% on a lower base—and when you calculate it out, you’re still losing money. Every time the market oscillates back and forth, it quietly chews away a chunk of TQ without you noticing. In a one-direction bull market, it’s a beast; in a choppy, tug-of-war market, it’s a meat grinder.
That’s why in that backtest, the max drawdown of nakedly DCA-ing into TQ was −84%. And with a starting point in 2000, it was even worse: −92.8%. Your account falls from the peak to just a sliver—and during all of that, you still have to grit your teeth and keep adding money every month.
In the backtest, it ultimately ran to 58x returns. But the author wrote one blunt truth in the original article that I especially appreciate. In real life, 99% of people will liquidate and exit on some night when they’re down −70%, turning that curve into a complete mess.
Yeah, I think that line is the most valuable thing in the whole article.