Tracks 3x the daily return of a US technology index.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
TECL is Direxion's 3x US technology ETF, launched in December 2008. It targets three times the daily return of the S&P 500 information-technology sector index, the same index XLK follows. Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia carry so much weight that their earnings days often decide TECL's day.
It overlaps heavily with TQQQ, but Amazon, Meta and Alphabet are not classified as technology and are absent, while chips and software weigh more. In a tech bear market like 2022 it moves much like TQQQ; in strong semiconductor years it leans towards SOXL.
High concentration means bad news at one company becomes bad news for the whole fund. When choosing split-buying settings, look at where the losing years cluster in the yearly table before looking at any single year's return. A comparison of leveraged funds under identical rules is in the 17-fund comparison.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 2008-12-30, TECL's worst peak-to-trough fall was -78.0%, from the 2021-12-27 high to the 2022-10-12 low over 200 trading days. It took another 418 trading days (about 1.7 years) to get back above that high, on 2024-06-12. The last close is 31.7% below the all-time high.
A fall of 78.0% needs a 354% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on TECL 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 4.21% over the whole history
and 5.04% 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) | +1360.73% | -24.67% | +28.24% | 1174 | 80.3% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +443.14% | -20.28% | +16.99% | 1177 | 87.3% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +935.44% | -44.58% | +24.21% | 1134 | 80.6% |
| Buy and hold | +5232.94% | -77.95% | +44.60% | - | - |
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 TECL 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 | +25.74% | -17.01% | +57.62% | -45.06% |
| 2025 | +28.55% | -24.24% | +30.29% | -62.81% |
| 2024 | +44.89% | -7.42% | +46.67% | -45.32% |
| 2023 | +42.01% | -11.51% | +209.91% | -33.84% |
| 2022 | +37.03% | -23.68% | -74.69% | -77.10% |
| 2021 | +25.94% | -17.80% | +122.55% | -26.40% |
| 2020 | +27.68% | -20.75% | +58.75% | -74.89% |
| 2019 | +14.13% | -21.65% | +183.61% | -29.76% |
| 2018 | +1.34% | -20.49% | -27.06% | -59.67% |
| 2017 | +31.78% | -4.38% | +117.86% | -15.12% |
Across these 10 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 2 and trailed it in 8. It lost money in 0 years; buy and hold lost in 2. In TECL's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -74.7% while the strategy returned +37.0%. In its best year, 2023, holding returned +209.9% and the strategy +42.0%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
TECL listed on 2008-12-30, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 1998, but the years before listing are index-based: TECL listed on 2008-12-30. Prices from 1998-12-22 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of Technology Select Sector ETF (XLK, 1x) multiplied by 3, minus the fund fee (0.85%/yr), borrowing cost (2x the 13-week T-bill rate) and an extra 3.2%/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.