An ETN tracking 3x the daily return of a gold miners index built from the GDX and GDXJ ETFs.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
GDXU is BMO's MicroSectors 3x gold miners ETN, listed in December 2020. It tracks three times the move of large gold-mining companies such as Newmont, Agnico Eagle and Barrick. The key point is that it follows the companies that dig gold, not gold itself. Miners have largely fixed extraction costs, so small changes in the gold price swing their profits, and their shares move two to three times as much as gold.
Gold miners were weak for a long stretch from early 2021 to early 2024, and GDXU fell more than 90% from its high. It then rebounded sharply as gold set record after record. Both a long decline and a violent rally fit inside its short history, so the backtest can point in opposite directions depending on the window chosen.
This ticker is a good test of the belief that split buying only works on charts that rise steadily. How the strategy behaved while the price was down more than 90% is covered in detail in 34,000 runs on gold and miner leveraged ETFs. As an ETN it also carries issuer credit risk and the possibility of early redemption.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 2020-12-03, GDXU's worst peak-to-trough fall was -94.4%, from the 2021-01-05 high to the 2024-02-28 low over 791 trading days. It took another 469 trading days (about 1.9 years) to get back above that high, on 2026-01-12. The last close is 85.9% below the all-time high.
A fall of 94.4% needs a 1,683% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on GDXU has to be judged on whether you could have held it through a stretch like this. Why drawdown comes before return.
The standard deviation of daily returns is 7.13% over the whole history
and 9.58% over the last year. By the rough rule
days ≈ (target ÷ daily volatility)², a 1.5% take-profit target needs about
less than one trading day at the recent pace, so most tranches close at the target well before the time cut.
Where the rule comes from.
Three preset strategies run over 2020-12-03 to 2026-10-23 with a $10,000 seed and 0.1% fees, alongside simply holding the same instrument.
| Strategy | Return | Max drawdown | CAGR | Trades | Win rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A2 Standard, base rules (no defence signal) | +129.92% | -46.42% | +15.25% | 725 | 78.2% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +149.89% | -37.41% | +16.90% | 730 | 82.5% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +80.08% | -60.42% | +10.55% | 705 | 79.1% |
| Buy and hold | -68.96% | -93.93% | -18.08% | - | - |
Read the drawdown column before the return column. Split buying leaves much of the seed in cash, which is the main reason its drawdown is smaller — treat it as lower exposure rather than protection.
Test GDXU with your own settings →The standard (diamond) preset, one calendar year at a time. A strategy worth using should have good years and bad years mixed — if one year made everything, that was the year, not the rules.
| Year | Strategy | Strategy MDD | Buy and hold | B&H MDD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | +7.91% | -40.98% | -69.36% | -87.11% |
| 2025 | +133.27% | -13.47% | +693.55% | -52.48% |
| 2024 | +4.55% | -33.30% | -15.24% | -57.64% |
| 2023 | -21.51% | -43.94% | -28.27% | -70.12% |
| 2022 | +46.27% | -34.75% | -60.06% | -88.97% |
| 2021 | -31.20% | -42.71% | -62.02% | -71.40% |
| 2020 | +9.59% | -6.14% | +4.42% | -18.10% |
| 2019 | - | - | - | - |
| 2018 | - | - | - | - |
| 2017 | - | - | - | - |
Across these 7 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 6 and trailed it in 1. It lost money in 2 years; buy and hold lost in 5. In GDXU's worst year here, 2026, holding returned -69.4% while the strategy returned +7.9%. In its best year, 2025, holding returned +693.5% and the strategy +133.3%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
GDXU listed on 2020-12-03, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 1996, but the years before listing are index-based: GDXU listed on 2020-12-03. Prices from 1996-06-04 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of Gold BUGS Index (^HUI; the 1x ETF GDX from May 2006) multiplied by 3, minus the fund fee (0.95%/yr), borrowing cost (2x the 13-week T-bill rate) and an extra 6.0%/yr tracking cost. Treat that range as an estimate. Over the years where both exist, the index-based series still ran ahead of the real product, so treat the index-based range as optimistic. See how the index-based history is built and checked.
Only for a single day. Over longer stretches volatility drag pulls the result below 3x in choppy markets and above it in a sustained trend. The arithmetic is here.
An ETN is an unsecured promise from a bank, not a fund holding assets. If the issuer fails or decides to redeem early, you have no claim on anything. What separates an ETN from an ETF.
Whole shares only. If a tranche is allocated less than one share's price, it buys nothing. Raise the seed or lower the number of tranches.
The Today's Orders page computes the next session's buy limit and each tranche's sell target from your start date. It is a calculation, not advice, and no orders are placed.