Tracks 3x the daily return of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Less volatile than the Nasdaq 3x products.
Prices as of 2026-10-23. Source: Data via FinanceDataReader · Policy rate via FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis).
UDOW is ProShares' 3x Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF, launched in February 2010. The Dow has only thirty members and is weighted by share price rather than market value, an old method that lets high-priced stocks such as Goldman Sachs move it the most.
Technology weighs less and financials, industrials and health care are spread evenly, so in a year like 2022, when tech fell hard, UDOW lost less than TQQQ or TECL. It lags badly in tech-led rallies. In a crash where every sector falls at once, such as March 2020, it dropped close to 80% from its high like the other 3x funds.
For split buying it behaves much like UPRO, the 3x S&P 500 fund. With only thirty members a single stock's collapse shows up directly in the index, so some stretches are choppier than UPRO. It is useful as a check on whether its losing years differ from those of a 3x tech fund run alongside it. See how splitting across strategies reduces drawdown.
Using real closing prices only (adjusted for splits and dividends) from 2010-02-11, UDOW's worst peak-to-trough fall was -80.3%, from the 2020-02-12 high to the 2020-03-23 low over 27 trading days. It took another 264 trading days (about 1.0 years) to get back above that high, on 2021-04-09. The last close is 13.3% below the all-time high.
A fall of 80.3% needs a 407% gain to get back to even. Any strategy on UDOW 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 3.06% over the whole history
and 2.37% 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) | +217.05% | -46.46% | +11.30% | 1218 | 71.9% |
| A1 Defensive, base rules | +110.88% | -38.81% | +7.17% | 1228 | 84.9% |
| A3 Aggressive, base rules (no defence signal) | +113.27% | -63.23% | +7.28% | 1140 | 70.4% |
| Buy and hold | +772.16% | -80.29% | +22.25% | - | - |
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 UDOW 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 | +1.44% | -13.26% | +13.83% | -28.20% |
| 2025 | +32.74% | -19.79% | +23.57% | -43.20% |
| 2024 | +7.70% | -14.54% | +26.72% | -17.96% |
| 2023 | +17.75% | -12.67% | +30.97% | -26.65% |
| 2022 | +22.38% | -16.22% | -34.38% | -55.93% |
| 2021 | +12.63% | -11.59% | +70.38% | -18.37% |
| 2020 | -8.92% | -40.81% | -20.55% | -79.81% |
| 2019 | +0.25% | -17.23% | +73.25% | -19.78% |
| 2018 | -9.19% | -24.95% | -25.19% | -49.40% |
| 2017 | +17.79% | -7.46% | +95.72% | -9.92% |
Across these 10 years the strategy beat buy and hold in 4 and trailed it in 6. It lost money in 2 years; buy and hold lost in 3. In UDOW's worst year here, 2022, holding returned -34.4% while the strategy returned +22.4%. In its best year, 2017, holding returned +95.7% and the strategy +17.8%. Giving up much of the best years is the price of the smaller drawdowns.
UDOW listed on 2010-02-11, and every number on this page uses real prices only. In the backtest tool you can go back to 1993, but the years before listing are index-based: UDOW listed on 2010-02-11. Prices from 1993-01-01 to the day before listing are converted from the 1x index, not real trades: the daily return of Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI; the 1x ETF DIA from 1998) multiplied by 3, minus the fund fee (0.95%/yr), borrowing cost (2x the 13-week T-bill rate) and an extra 1.4%/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.