I use SSO a lot and have wondered about the time decay factor for a while. This morning I sat down and put a 60 day "fake" sequence into excel where every 15 days the value worked it's way back to the starting point. The amount of down days and up days were equal. The decay worked out to 1.0% over 60 days for the "double long fund" and 2.7% for the "double short fund". The triple long/short decays were 2.6% and 5.4%.
In practice, I can assure you that SSO does decay over time vs. the S&P, however it's made me enought money that so far I haven't really cared. Now I may change my strategy.
7 ETFs to Short Right Now [View article]
7 ETFs to Short Right Now [View article]
In practice, I can assure you that SSO does decay over time vs. the S&P, however it's made me enought money that so far I haven't really cared. Now I may change my strategy.