2X Nvidia ETFs Are Supposed to Double Daily Gains—Why Did Some Lag NVDA?

Nvidia Corp. NVDA gained 34.8% between Sep. 5, 2025, and Oct. 12, 2026, but investors seeking amplified exposure through daily leveraged ETFs experienced markedly different outcomes.

Morningstar Research Managing Director Jeffrey Ptak highlighted the disparity in a recent post on X, noting that 2x daily NVDA ETFs returned between 31.8% and 39.5% over the period. The nearly 8-percentage-point gap separated the best performer, Direxion’s fund, from the worst, T-REX’s offering.

The comparison raises a question: If these ETFs all target twice Nvidia’s daily performance, why did their returns diverge so widely over the same period?

Direxion Vs. T-REX: A Nearly 8-Point Gap

The performance spread is striking because both products seek to deliver 200% of Nvidia’s daily stock return before fees and expenses.

Direxion Daily NVDA Bull 2X ETF NVDU has an annual expense ratio of 0.92%, while the T-REX 2X Long NVIDIA Daily Target ETF (NASDAQ:NVDX) charges 1.05%, according to their published fund disclosures.

That 0.13-percentage-point difference in annual expenses is unlikely, by itself, to explain a 7.7-percentage-point return gap over roughly 13 months.

Other factors, including daily compounding, financing costs, portfolio implementation and tracking differences, warrant examination. The precise contribution of each factor cannot be established from the headline returns alone.

The funds also differ in size. GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF NVDL has approximately $3.5 billion in net assets, compared with $523 million for NVDU and $442 million for NVDX.

Why 2X NVDA ETFs Don’t Deliver Twice the Stock’s Return

The critical distinction is that leveraged ETFs target a multiple of a stock’s daily return, not its cumulative return over several months or a year.

To maintain that daily target, funds rebalance their exposure as Nvidia’s share price changes. Returns then compound from one trading session to the next, making the path of the stock’s gains and losses important.

Consider a simplified example. If Nvidia rises 10% in one session and falls 10% the next, the stock loses 1% over the two sessions. A hypothetical 2x daily ETF would gain 20% on the first day and lose 20% on the second, leaving it down 4% before fees and other costs.

This is why multiplying Nvidia’s 34.8% cumulative gain by two would produce a misleading benchmark. A 69.6% gain is not what a 2x daily ETF promises over the entire period.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission warns that leveraged ETFs can diverge significantly from their stated multiples over periods longer than one day, particularly when markets are volatile.

What Investors Should Watch

Ptak’s comparison also highlights why investors should not treat leveraged ETFs tracking the same stock as interchangeable.

Expense ratios matter, but so do daily tracking performance, financing and derivative costs, distributions, and the difference between returns calculated using net asset value and exchange-traded market prices. A thorough comparison should use the same dates, return methodology and treatment of distributions for every fund.

Traders considering leveraged Nvidia exposure should examine how consistently each product meets its daily objective, how much it costs to maintain exposure and how it behaves through both rallies and sharp reversals.

With single-stock leverage amplifying Nvidia’s already concentrated risk, a strong underlying stock performance does not automatically translate into a superior long-term result for every 2x ETF.

Read Also: Tesla Is Up 10% — So Why Are These 2X TSLA ETFs Heading in the Opposite Direction?

Photo: PJ McDonnell on Shutterstock