The Strategy
US$1,000 a month into a 3× leveraged Nasdaq-100 fund. Near an all-time high I invest only a fifth of the cash I'm holding and bank the rest. The further the fund falls below its high, the bigger the share I spend. At −60% I spend all of it. I'm publishing the whole rule set so that if I break it in a bad month, you'll know.
The intention
Most people do the opposite without meaning to. Confidence rises with the market, so we buy hardest near the top and go quiet after a crash, which is when future returns are best. Counter-cyclical leverage flips that instinct and makes it mechanical, so it doesn't depend on how brave I feel that week.
On the way up my leverage falls. I buy a small slice and let cash pile up next to it. On the way down it rises. The cash converts into shares, faster the deeper it goes. The cash isn't sitting idle. It's waiting for a trigger I already agreed to.
The concept is Henrique Centieiro's counter-cyclical leverage framework, published on TradingView. The drawing is mine; any clumsiness in it is mine too.
The tier ladder
One number decides everything: how far TQQQ has fallen from its record high. That sets the percentage. The percentage applies to all the cash I have available, which is last month's reserve plus this month's US$1,000.
Deploy 20% of all available cash
Four fifths of everything I hold stays in cash. This is the boring state and it might last years. Most of the work is not spending money.
Deploy 33% of all available cash
A third of the pile. On a 3× fund a −20% print means the Nasdaq-100 itself has barely moved.
Deploy 67% of all available cash
Two thirds, in one order. Whatever is left carries into next month and gets counted again.
Deploy 100% of all available cash
The entire reserve, in the month the headlines are worst. After that I'm fully invested and all I have left is next month's US$1,000. This is the tier I'll find hardest to do, and the one most likely to hurt.
Drawdown is measured on TQQQ itself, not on the Nasdaq-100. The fund falls roughly three times as hard, so these tiers fire far more readily than the index would suggest.
Worked example
| Tier | Deploy | Spend | Carried forward |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline | 20% | $2,200 | $8,800 |
| Dip | 33% | $3,630 | $7,370 |
| Deep dip | 67% | $7,370 | $3,630 |
| Crash | 100% | $11,000 | $0 |
Why not just buy every month
Dollar-cost averaging on its own is a good system. It removes the need to guess the bottom, and over twenty years it does most of the work. Holding a cash reserve on top of it only earns its keep in one situation, but it is an important one.
B.D. Collins ran both against TQQQ over the same twenty-year window, changing only the start date. Buying in at a market low, the two finish within a few hundred dollars of each other. Buying in at a market high, the cash-reserve version finishes about sixteen percent ahead.
| You started | Plain monthly buying | Holding cash for the falls |
|---|---|---|
| At a low January 2003 | $1.91m | $1.91m |
| At a high October 2007 | $335k | $389k |
Nobody knows which of those two they are starting from. I am beginning in August 2026 with TQQQ about twenty-five percent below its record, which is neither. Holding cash is what I am paying to not have to guess.
There is a second reason, and it is the one that actually keeps me in the game. A plain monthly buyer has to endure a crash. Someone holding a reserve gets to use one. Collins puts it well: with a twenty-year horizon you start hoping for pullbacks, because that is when the shares get cheap. That is a very different feeling to watching your balance fall with nothing to do about it, and I suspect it is the difference between sticking with this and quitting in year four.
Figures from B.D. Collins, $1,000 to $1,000,000: Proven Strategies for Triple Leveraged ETF Success. His method uses a fixed 80/20 split rather than my four tiers, but the principle is the same: buy least at the top, most at the bottom.
The mechanics
The percentage applies to the prior cumulative reserve plus the new US$1,000. There is no separate reserve overlay and no second calculation. One pile, one percentage.
Multiply the pile by the tier percentage, then round the purchase down to full shares. In a baseline month at $88.09, $300 buys three shares for $264.27 and the remaining $35.73 rejoins the reserve.
I contribute US$1,000 a month, so the AUD it costs me changes with the exchange rate. I'm choosing a steady position size in the currency the fund actually trades in, and accepting a variable bill at home.
The market price sets the tier and marks the whole position. The price I'm actually filled at sets how many shares that money bought. I log both.
Same week every month. The tier is read on the day I actually place the order, not the first of the month.
There is no sell rule at all during accumulation. The tiers only ever control what goes in.
Considered and rejected
Safer, and the sensible answer for most people. I chose the tier system as my risk control instead of a lower multiple. If I'm wrong about anything on this page, it's probably this.
Collins' second system uses a 14-period moving average to move in and out of the fund, sitting in cash through downturns instead of riding them. It sidesteps the drawdowns that make TQQQ frightening, and on his numbers it works. It also requires me to act on a signal every month and to be right about re-entry. I would rather have rules that never ask me to decide anything.
No moving averages, no volatility filters, no macro calls. Drawdown from the high is the only input, and anyone can check it against my published figures.
Please read this part twice
A soft website does not make a leveraged strategy safe. I'm publishing the failure modes with the same detail as the rules, because a strategy page that only lists the upside isn't a strategy page. It's a sales pitch.
The deepest tier spends the entire reserve. If the fall continues to −70% or −80%, and in 2022 TQQQ fell about 82%, my only ammunition is the next US$1,000. The rules have no gear below the bottom gear.
TQQQ targets three times the index's daily move. Over months and years in choppy markets, compounding drags the result well below 3× the index return, sometimes below zero while the index is flat.
An Australian buying a US-domiciled fund is also taking an unhedged AUD/USD bet, in an index where a handful of companies carry most of the weight.
The rules are easy on a spreadsheet. Emptying the entire reserve into a market that has more than halved, in the same month my job might be at risk, is a different thing entirely. That part is untested.
If you take one thing from this page, take the risk section — not the tier table.