Tracks 3x the daily return of the MSCI Korea 25/50 Index. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dominate the index, so it moves with the semiconductor cycle. 1.32% annual fee.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
KORU is Direxion's 3x South Korea ETF, launched in April 2013. It follows an MSCI Korea index in which Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix carry very large weights, so it is in effect a bet on the Korean memory-chip cycle. It tracks won-denominated stocks converted to dollars, so the won–dollar exchange rate is mixed straight into the return.
Its defining feature is trading hours. KORU trades during the New York session, when the Korean market is closed, so its price is an estimate of where Korea will open next and can drift from the value of what it holds. After the early-2018 peak the Korean market moved sideways for years, and volatility drag took KORU more than 90% below its high.
What happens if you buy a Korean leveraged fund at the open after KORU rises is covered in a 13-year backtest. For split buying, KORU shows how much a 3x fund bleeds in a long sideways market. Read it with the volatility drag arithmetic.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 2013-04-10, KORU's worst peak-to-trough fall was -96.1%, from the 2018-01-26 high to the 2025-04-08 low over 1809 trading days. It took another 269 trading days (about 1.1 years) to get back above that high, on 2026-05-05. The last close is 83.3% below the all-time high.
A fall of 96.1% needs a 2,491% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on KORU 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 5.11% over the whole history
and 10.73% 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 2016-01-04 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) | +20.44% | -83.63% | +1.74% | 1297 | 73.7% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +8.03% | -70.55% | +0.72% | 1303 | 81.0% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +4.21% | -88.16% | +0.38% | 1245 | 72.9% |
| Buy and hold | +1.81% | -96.05% | +0.17% | - | - |
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 KORU 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 | +69.82% | -41.39% | +1.25% | -83.87% |
| 2025 | +36.21% | -34.16% | +417.51% | -43.93% |
| 2024 | -41.13% | -41.56% | -61.85% | -64.26% |
| 2023 | -14.38% | -30.50% | +32.20% | -52.47% |
| 2022 | -33.19% | -49.22% | -70.10% | -82.18% |
| 2021 | -4.69% | -28.10% | -39.26% | -57.84% |
| 2020 | +13.82% | -50.93% | +48.56% | -82.77% |
| 2019 | -29.84% | -38.21% | +8.57% | -56.02% |
| 2018 | +0.74% | -33.85% | -61.72% | -69.08% |
| 2017 | +27.37% | -13.06% | +150.01% | -23.46% |
Across these 10 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 5 and trailed it in 5. It lost money in 5 years; buy and hold lost in 4. In KORU's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -70.1% while the strategy returned -33.2%. In its best year, 2025, holding returned +417.5% and the strategy +36.2%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
KORU listed on 2013-04-10, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 2000, but the years before listing are index-based: KORU listed on 2013-04-10. Prices from 2000-05-12 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of iShares MSCI South Korea ETF (EWY, 1x) multiplied by 3, minus the fund fee (1.32%/yr), borrowing cost (2x the 13-week T-bill rate) and an extra 3.3%/yr tracking cost. Treat that range as an estimate. Even close-only strategies such as A and D can shift by 1–2 points a year over this range depending on the conversion assumptions (dividends, costs, index differences). 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.
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.