Tracks 3x the daily return of an index of US Treasuries maturing in 20+ years. It moves with interest rates, not equities.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
TMF is Direxion's 3x long-term US Treasury ETF, launched in April 2009. It targets three times the daily return of an index of Treasuries with more than twenty years to maturity. It is a bet on interest rates, not on stocks: it rises when long-term yields fall and falls when they rise.
For years it was used as a hedge that rises when stocks fall, and in crises where yields collapsed, such as 2008 and early 2020, it did. When inflation pushes rates up quickly, as in 2022, it falls alongside stocks. TMF lost more than 70% then and has not regained its 2020 high. It has also been through several reverse splits.
Split buying means buying as the price falls, so in a multi-year rising-rate regime the strategy keeps adding and losses grow. That is why it should not be handled like an equity leveraged fund. How assets behaved across rate regimes is in rate regimes and assets, and the link between Treasury yields and chips is in Treasury yields and SOXL.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 2009-04-16, TMF's worst peak-to-trough fall was -95.1%, from the 2020-03-09 high to the 2026-10-05 low over 1652 trading days. It has not regained that high since: 14 trading days have passed since the low. The last close is 94.3% below the all-time high.
A fall of 95.1% needs a 1,949% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on TMF 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 2.82% over the whole history
and 1.78% 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) | -30.82% | -60.23% | -3.36% | 1310 | 65.8% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +5.91% | -36.39% | +0.53% | 1321 | 79.6% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | -41.93% | -68.13% | -4.92% | 1243 | 63.6% |
| Buy and hold | -84.61% | -95.09% | -15.94% | - | - |
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 TMF 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 | -13.96% | -19.08% | -21.00% | -39.66% |
| 2025 | +10.59% | -10.44% | -7.48% | -27.19% |
| 2024 | -19.88% | -20.73% | -36.76% | -38.06% |
| 2023 | -2.53% | -23.91% | -19.67% | -59.98% |
| 2022 | -38.79% | -46.24% | -70.05% | -75.13% |
| 2021 | +8.77% | -21.33% | -19.76% | -39.26% |
| 2020 | +25.31% | -11.41% | +31.10% | -43.75% |
| 2019 | +13.18% | -7.88% | +30.88% | -24.66% |
| 2018 | -6.81% | -16.63% | -9.54% | -29.67% |
| 2017 | +19.63% | -7.03% | +20.71% | -15.09% |
Across these 10 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 7 and trailed it in 3. It lost money in 5 years; buy and hold lost in 7. In TMF's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -70.0% while the strategy returned -38.8%. In its best year, 2020, holding returned +31.1% and the strategy +25.3%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
TMF listed on 2009-04-16, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 2002, but the years before listing are index-based: TMF listed on 2009-04-16. Prices from 2002-07-30 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of iShares 20+ Year Treasury ETF (TLT, 1x, interest reinvested) multiplied by 3, minus the fund fee (1.06%/yr), borrowing cost (2x the 13-week T-bill rate) and an extra 3.4%/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.