As of October 14, 2026, most leveraged and inverse ETFs have not delivered their stated multiple over the three months just ended. Of 644 funds in this group, 507 finished short of the multiple printed in their name, with the median fund landing 4.6 percentage points below it. This is not a defect in any single fund. These products are built to deliver their multiple over one day, then reset, so what a holder gets over weeks or months is the result of that daily multiple compounding on itself, not the multiple simply applied to the period's overall move.
The pattern across holding periods makes the mechanism visible. Over one month, 449 of 679 funds were short, with a median gap of 1.3 points. Stretch the window to six months and the median gap widens to 7.4 points; at one year it is 10.6 points; at three years, across a smaller surviving set of 98 funds, it reaches 27.1 points. The median distance the underlying travelled also grows across these windows, from 1.8% at one month to 34.6% at three years. The gap tracks how far the underlying moves during the period, not simply where that underlying ends up, which is consistent with the daily-reset design these funds disclose.
Volatility sharpens the effect further. Funds tracking underlyings with volatility of 0% to 30% showed a median difference from stated of −1.8% over three months, with 120 of 179 funds short. At the other end, funds tied to underlyings with volatility of 80% and above showed a median difference of −15.4%, with 106 of 131 short. The median volatility numbers in between, 39% and 69%, line up with median gaps of −5.0% and −9.3%. The data shows the gap widening in step with how choppy the underlying has been, separate from any trend in its price.
Where more than one issuer runs the same mandate on the same underlying, the spread between funds is visible even though the daily multiple and the number of days are identical. On GME at +2x, two issuers produced a 6.4 point spread between the closest fund and the furthest, with the underlying up 22.0%. On BMNR at +2x, three issuers produced a 6.2 point spread on a 40.9% move. Smaller spreads also appear, such as 3.4 points between two funds tracking NXPI at +2x and seven funds tracking SPCX at +2x. Because these funds share the same stated multiple and the same trading days, the differences between them come down to how each fund is constructed and run, not to any difference in mandate.
Readers can look up any individual fund on ETFIQ's fund pages to see its stated multiple, its measured difference from that multiple over one month, three months, six months, one year and three years, and the volatility of the underlying it tracks over the same period.