Sydney · A monthly journal
I'm Tran. Every month I put US$1,000 into a leveraged Nasdaq-100 fund, following rules I wrote down before I started. Then I publish what happened. I'm not counting down to a retirement date and I have nothing to sell you. This is one experiment with part of my portfolio, not all of my money. Every number from it goes up here until I know whether it was a good idea.
The signal right now
TQQQ record high, 3 June 2026. Every tier is measured from this one number.
First reading lands with the August buy.
Deploy this share of all available cash.
Worked out from the rules, not typed in by hand. How the tiers work · Full history
Why now
The Treasury Laws Amendment (Tax Reform No. 1) Act 2026 passed on 25 June 2026 and received Royal Assent the following day. For individuals, trusts and partnerships, the 50% CGT discount is replaced with cost base indexation to CPI plus a minimum 30% tax rate on real gains, and it applies to shares and units in trusts, not only property.
Gains accruing to 30 June 2027
Hold longer than twelve months, halve the nominal gain, pay your marginal rate on what remains. The rule Australians have planned around since 1999.
Gains accruing from 1 July 2027
Index the cost base to inflation, then pay your marginal rate on the real gain, with a minimum of 30%. Inflation is shielded. Everything above it is not.
◆ The change is prospective — most portfolios will straddle the line
Only the inflation portion of a gain is shielded. The better your real return, the smaller the share of it that's protected, so the assets most exposed to this reform are precisely the high-growth ones.
Low-income years no longer produce low-tax realisations. Selling down slowly at a low marginal rate in early retirement is a much weaker lever than it was.
With no discount waiting at the end, the timing of realisation is one of the few levers left, which happens to suit an accumulation strategy with no sell rule.
Concessional rates inside super are relatively more attractive now. But super is locked until preservation age, which is the opposite of retiring early. That tension just got sharper.
What I'm trying
The standard Australian answer is a low-cost index fund held forever. It's a good answer and I'm not arguing with it. But I wanted to know what happens if you hold most of your money in cash while the market is near its high, then convert it into a 3× Nasdaq-100 fund as the market falls. 20% of the pile near the high. A third at −20%. Two thirds at −40%. All of it at −60%. Nobody in Australia seems to have written that down over a full cycle, so I'm doing it.
How it works
Two ideas doing one job. The first is deliberately dull. The second is what turns a falling market from something to dread into a schedule of larger purchases.
Every month, no exceptions
A fixed US$1,000 goes in every month, whatever the price is doing. It takes the decision I'm worst at, picking the right moment, off the table completely. Part of it buys shares now. The rest waits as cash.
Only as the market falls
How much of that cash I deploy is set by one number: how far TQQQ sits below its high. Near the top I spend a little and let the reserve grow. The deeper the fall, the more I commit.
Each figure is a share of all the cash on hand: this month's US$1,000 plus everything already waiting in reserve. Whole shares only, and the remainder rolls into next month. Drawdown is measured from TQQQ's record high of $88.09, set 3 June 2026.
The engine
TQQQ aims for triple the Nasdaq-100's move on a single day, then resets and does it again tomorrow. Because those daily results compound on one another, a long climb carries the fund far past a plain 3× the index. Here is what $10,000 became in each, from TQQQ's first day to now. All three lines start from the same point on the left.
| Year | QQQ | TQQQ | $10k in TQQQ becomes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | −8% | −8% | $9,195 |
| 2013 | +37% | +140% | $33,570 |
| 2017 | +33% | +118% | $150,147 |
| 2020 | +49% | +110% | $591,370 |
| 2021 | +27% | +83% | $1,082,089 |
| 2022 | −33% | −79% | $226,373 |
| 2023 | +55% | +198% | $675,180 |
| 2025 | +26% | +34% | $1,435,525 |
| 2011–25 | +1,229% | +14,255% | $1.44M |
QQQ, the plain tracker, turned $10,000 into about $133,000. Tripling that return would have reached roughly $379,000. TQQQ actually reached about $1.44 million. That is not three times QQQ. It is close to twelve times it, and about four times what tripling the index implies. The daily reset, compounding day after day through one of the strongest runs the Nasdaq has ever had, is the whole reason.
It cuts both ways, and hard. Look at 2022: the index fell 33% and TQQQ fell 79%, wiping out four fifths of a balance in a single year. The same compounding that built the tall line hollows the fund out in any market that chops sideways or falls. That is the risk this whole plan is built around, not a footnote to it.
Growth of $10,000 with dividends reinvested, February 2010 to July 2026, the same window as the table below. A log scale is used because the three end values span from $133k to $1.44M. Source: Yahoo Finance annual total returns, compounded. '3× QQQ' triples QQQ's growth and is shown for scale, not a real fund. TQQQ launched in February 2010, so this is close to its entire history. A log scale is used because the three lines span three orders of magnitude. Selected years shown in the table; the compounded total covers all of them. Source: Yahoo Finance. Figures ignore brokerage, currency conversion and tax.
Please read this part twice
A nice-looking website doesn't make a leveraged strategy safe. I've given the ways this fails the same space as the ways it works. A page that only lists the upside is a sales pitch, not a plan.
Backtests of a simulated 3× Nasdaq-100 through the 2000–2002 crash show it falling around 99%. My deepest rule fires at −60%. After that I have nothing left.
These funds track three times the index's daily move, not its yearly one. In choppy markets the compounding works against you. Over a long enough sideways stretch the fund can lose money while the index goes nowhere.
If markets just grind upward for a decade, my reserve sits earning cash rates while most of my contributions miss the run. Buying the same fund every month with no rules at all would have beaten me. The numbers here will show it.
Rules are easy on a spreadsheet. Sending $12,000 into a market that has halved, in the same month my job might be at risk, is a different thing entirely. I don't know yet whether I can do it.
Where to start
The full tier ladder, a worked example at US$1,000, what I ruled out, and every way this can fail.
Every month since August 2026: price, drawdown from the high, shares bought, cash reserve and running return.
What I actually did and how it felt. Short in the quiet months, longer in the ugly ones.
Once a month, nothing else
Sent the first week of every month: the update, the table, and any change to the rules. No course, no coaching, no affiliate links. I'm not selling anything.