After the big losses of 2008 and early 2009, investors were in a big hurry to earn back the money they lost. That created a perfect environment for companies offering leveraged exchange-traded funds, which promise amplified returns from market movements in either direction. Even now, leveraged ETFs are still popular, as speculators try to guess the market's next big move.
But if you're looking for the kind of leverage that lets you truly multiply your long-term returns, then those ETFs aren't the way to go. Instead, there's a better strategy involving options. It'll give you at least a chance of making some serious money -- provided you pick the right stocks.
Why leveraged ETFs haven't worked
The reason leveraged ETFs have been so controversial, warranting warnings from financial regulators and even outright bans at some brokers, is that they don't work when you hold them over multiple trading sessions. Typically, these ETFs are designed to track indexes on a daily basis.
Although most of them do a good job of daily tracking, they simply aren't able to track those same indexes for longer periods of time. As a result, sometimes both the bullish and bearish ETFs tied to the same index produce substantial losses for ETF shareholders. Just take a look at some examples:
| Sector | 3-Year Annualized Return of Bull Fund | 3-Year Annualized Return of Bear Fund |
|---|---|---|
| Oil | (24.8%) | (34.6%) |
| Financial Stocks | (48.7%) | (42.8%) |
| Real Estate | (35.5%) | (65.7 %) |
Source: Yahoo! Finance as of Nov. 23.
You'd think that either bulls or bears would've made money. Yet with these ETFs, it didn't matter which way you bet. If you held onto these funds over the years, you lost money -- a lot of money.
Know your investment
If you want leverage for a longer period than a single day, you need to pick an investment that's better suited to that purpose. One way would be to buy stock on margin, but that has its own dangers. However, there's an alternative using options that's quite a bit safer.
Say you want to use double leverage over a period of several months. One easy method to get that leverage is to buy deep in-the-money call options that cost about half what you'd pay for the company's stock. If you do that, you can buy options on 200 shares with the same money you'd pay for 100 shares outright. That doubles your risk -- and reward.
As an example, say you want to mimic the biggest positions in the publicly traded stock portfolio of legendary investor Warren Buffett, but you want to double your exposure. Here are the options you could buy to use this strategy in real life:
| Stock | Stock Price | Call Option | Option Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO) | 63.62 | Jan. $30 | 33.63 |
| Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC) | 26.80 | Apr. $15 | 11.95 |
| American Express (NYSE: AXP) | 41.95 | Jan. $20 | 22.05 |
| Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG) | 62.61 | Jan. $30 | 32.78 |
| Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT) | 30.23 | Jan. $15 | 15.25 |
| Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ) | 62.87 | Jan. $30 | 32.93 |
| Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) | 53.67 | Mar. $30 | 23.83 |
Source: Yahoo Finance. Stock price as of Nov. 23 close. Prices based on bid-ask spreads as of close on Nov. 23.
For more detail, look at Coca-Cola. To buy 100 shares, you'd spend $6,362. Or you could buy call options on 200 shares for $6,726. If you bought the stock and it rose to $70 by mid-January, your shares would be worth $7,000, for a profit of $638. On the other hand, the options would be worth $40 per share, or $8,000, for a profit of $1,274 -- almost twice the profit from buying the stock, just as you intended.
Of course, if the stock price falls, you'll lose twice as much money. But that's the downside of using leverage.
Moreover, because options let you choose different expiration dates, you get to decide the length of time you want to measure your returns. Unlike leveraged ETFs, you're not stuck with the one-day timeframe. Now, because options have time value, you may have to pay extra for longer-dated options, but once you do, you never have to worry about the tracking errors that leveraged ETFs face.
Leverage is optional
Options open a number of interesting doors for investors, but not all of them involve any leverage whatsoever. Used wisely, they can be valuable tools to help you enhance your returns to generate extra income and attain better buying and selling prices -- just to name a couple.
After nearly a year, our Motley Fool Options service will soon reopen to subscribers. But as a limited-time offer, you'll need to act fast. To learn more about Motley Fool Options and how options strategies can help you make money, just enter your email address in the box below to get the latest information.
