TQQQ
ProShares UltraPro QQQ
stock NASDAQ ETF

Worse due to beta erosion. It’s just math. Say $BITX was a $100 and BTC goes down 25%, $BITX is now $50, down 50%, but to get back to $100 it has to go up 100%. So say BTC went down to 75k from 100k and then back to 100k— 33% gain—BITX would only go up to $88. If you look at graphs of older leveraged funds like TQQQ you see they never full make back the gains from their previous highs.

my AI overlord says: Turning $250K into $1 million is ambitious—but absolutely possible with the right mix of strategy, time, and risk tolerance. Let’s break down a few realistic paths someone could take, depending on how fast they want to get there and how much risk they’re willing to stomach:
🧠 Option 1: The Long Game (10–15 Years)
- Approach: Invest in a diversified portfolio of broad-market ETFs like VTI, QQQ, or SCHG.
- Expected Return: ~8–10% annually (historical average)
- Outcome: At 10% annual growth, $250K becomes $1M in ~15 years.
- Risk: Moderate. Market volatility, but historically reliable over time.
⚡ Option 2: Accelerated Growth (5–10 Years)
- Approach: Tilt toward high-growth sectors like tech (SMH, AIQ), clean energy (QCLN), or biotech (XBI).
- Expected Return: 12–15% annually (with higher volatility)
- Outcome: $250K could 4x in 8–9 years if trends hold.
- Risk: Higher. Sector-specific downturns can delay or derail progress.
🎯 Option 3: Aggressive Strategy (3–5 Years)
- Approach: Mix of individual high-growth stocks, 0DTE options, or leveraged ETFs like TQQQ or SOXL.
- Expected Return: Potentially 25–40%+ annually—but highly variable.
- Outcome: $250K could hit $1M in 3–4 years, but with serious drawdown risk.
- Risk: Very high. One bad year could cut the portfolio in half.
🏘️ Bonus Option: Real Estate or Business
- Approach: Use $250K as a down payment on income-generating property or seed capital for a business.
- Upside: Leverage and cash flow can accelerate returns.
- Risk: Depends on execution, market, and management.
If this were a real scenario, I’d suggest building a tiered plan: anchor with stable ETFs, layer in some growth, and carve out a small slice for high-risk/high-reward plays. Want to sketch out a sample portfolio or timeline based on one of these paths?

Sell all, reinvest all into TQQQ

TQQQ and SOXL

50:50 in UPRO and TQQQ and you will be caught up in no time!

I don't really pay attention to the moving averages because of how quickly it can swing due to the 3x nature of it. What I pay attention now is the total amount of the account that it makes up. I love the growth aspect of TQQQ but getting addicted to that and not taking your wins just increases your risk. If TQQQ grows to 50% or so of your account because you're letting it ride and one day the bottom drops out... there goes 50% of your account. 2021-2022 burned me bad so I had to figure out a new way.

The ratio I try to keep is 50% monthy dividend payers, 40% growth, 10% leveraged. The leveraged tends to grow quickly so every time the leveraged portion organically hits 15% of total account value I sell off that 5% and spread it around whatever it takes to keep that ratio in balance. That way the majority of the account is mostly stable, but if the market tanks and the leveraged funds sink hard its no more than 10% or so of the entire account. I also set stop losses pretty frequently on those. I've seen news break before that dropped TQQQ off a cliff, but my stop loss hit and I only lost a fraction of what I could have. Keeping the growth potential high but also limiting the downward as much as I can.
The thing that was hardest was changing my mindset away from # of shares to looking at it as a "cash pile." I was chasing shares for a long time and ended up eating some huge losses while I was figuring it out. But I started looking at it as the dollar value, and not share total, I was able to wrap my head around it growing as a percentage rather than obsessing being up or down on shares.

Last year, [I wrote this article](https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-i-outperformed-the-market-by-130-because-of-artificial-intelligence-7d7a459a0081) explaining how AI and no-code backtesting tools give retail investors an unprecedented edge.
I likened it to Moody’s Manual, a series of publications on publicly traded stocks. [Warren Buffet made his fortune by going through 20,000 pages of these reports](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-shares-earn-whopping-102900347.html), and found value stocks that other people were overlooking.
I claimed that AI is the modern-day Moody’s Manuals, and to prove it, I showcased my portfolio was at $36,382, which was up 49% year-to-date at the time.
[Pic: My returns last year from Jan 1st 2024 to Oct 1st 2024](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*34FI9cYfB0Bh1heI.jpeg)
I now have an update. From Jan 1st 2025 to July 5th 2025, my portfolio is up another 49%. My account is at $56,759 (up 49%) while the S&P 500 is up 6.04%.
[Pic: A screenshot of my Robinhood account](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*v-wEsx7wpHFiJIpYpog5fw@2x.jpeg)
In other words, I’m outperforming the market by 700% (8x). Here’s how I did it a second time.
# A Tool For the Modern-Day Warren Buffets
To beat the market for a second consecutive year, I relied on [NexusTrade](https://nexustrade.io/chat), a tool to process the thousands of stocks in the market and help me find the best ones for my trading strategy.
[Sign up for NexusTrade today for free!](https://nexustrade.io/chat)
[Pic: Using AI to query for stocks with specific fundamentals](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*LWTuwVCDMBJIdLwgKP5c6w.png)
Being a software engineer, I see first-hand the impact that AI is having on the world. Betting on the outperformance of AI stocks, I used NexusTrade to find fundamentally strong stocks within minutes.
[Pic: The list of stocks retrieved by the AI, which includes NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, and Meta](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*rR62wWgfRRdAzFkucCAfeg.png)
The AI searches through fundamental data from EODHD, a high-quality data provider. By doing this, it gets accurate, data-backed answers to financial questions.
> Want high-quality fundamental data for your trading? [Sign up for EODHD today!](https://eodhd.com/pricing?via=austinstarks&ref1=nexustrade)
Personally, I chose to invest heavily in Google and NVIDIA. For NVIDIA, it is one of the fastest-growing stocks (of its size) that we have ever seen, with an astounding 40% compound annual growth rate for its revenue. It also has outstanding margins.
For Google, it owns powerhouses within the AI space, including Waymo, it’s self-driving cars, and Gemini, the best and most cost-effective series of LLMs out there.
[Despite all of the hype, Google BEATS OpenAI and remains the best AI company in the world.](https://medium.com/codex/despite-all-of-the-hype-google-beats-openai-and-remains-the-best-ai-company-in-the-world-404dd9da66e8)
But buying and holding these stocks alone wouldn’t have lead to my portfolio’s outperformance.
Nope. I had a much more aggressive trading strategy.
# Turning insights into trading strategies
Believing that the overall market would go up this year, but that these AI stocks will do even better, I transformed my stock choices into an aggressive trading strategy by using options.
I bought in-the-money, long-dated call options using 30% of my buying power. I then decided to wait.
I didn’t use indicators or technical analysis. I let time work its magic.
If the overall market went down, then my plan was to double-down **slowly** using shorter-dated options. At best, I’d like to buy 20% of my buying power in shorter-dated options every week. The market rarely goes straight down, and I could quickly buy and then sell short-dated options to recover my losses.
**It is important to note that this strategy is incredibly risky.** Even though I backtested similar strategies using leveraged ETFs, what happened in the past may not happen in the future. There is a legitimate chance of financial ruin if the market tanked for long-periods of time, or if I doubled-down too aggressively.
[Pic: The backtest results of a TQQQ trading strategy with similar rationale – click here to check out the exact trading rules](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*GIpSlIycB_PmF8CQ2L7Xzg.png)
The risk is clearly demonstrated earlier this year, [when my portfolio was down over 41% year-to-date.](https://medium.com/@austin-starks/i-lost-16-649-on-nvidia-heres-why-i-bought-more-7a035122e955)
However, I stuck to my trading strategy. Three months later, my account soared to all-time highs.
[Pic: My account is at $56,754, a 452% increase for all-time](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*TNadeC1GGEBTLfnnULstfg@2x.jpeg)
The best part is that the majority of my portfolio is now in cash. I’m earning 4% APY with Robinhood gold with an account balance that’s more than 4x the initial value.
All of this has been possible due to AI and automation. Thanks NVIDIA!
# Concluding Thoughts
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I cracked the code for a 0-risk trading strategy. But I am doing FAR better than the average investor.
I have boatloads of cash earning risk-free interest, call options in my favorite stocks, and a profitable trading strategy. NexusTrade has given me the ability to turn $10,000 over $56,000. I’m not a savant that’s looking at 30 different indicators. I’m using AI to do the work for me.
The best part is, you can too.
Sit down, use the free app, and learn how to be a data-driven algorithmic trader who earns tens of thousands of dollars.
Or get left behind and continue gambling based on whatever is trending on WallStreetBets.
The choice is up to you.

Just depends on your strategy. I have a good core of QQQI, SPYI, and AIPI that give me a significantly higher monthly cash flow into my Roth than would be normally possible. I use those dividends to buy SPMO, QQQ, SPY, and usually a leveraged fund like TQQQ or FNGU.
Once the leveraged funds grow to a certain percentage I take the profits and dump the gains back into either my regular indexes. The monthly dividends allow me to take on high-risk/high-reward positions without putting my underlying investment at undue risk while frequently capitalizing on the gains with traditional indexes. Everyone has a different method

lol only you can say if you are taking to much risk. I'm the wrong person to ask about risk. I have 2 IRA's. One is 89% in TQQQ and the other is 60/40 TQQQ/SOXL

I think you're on right track, but I would just describe it as overweighting when you expect market to go up following a correction.
There are multiple ways to do this. One is switching to a higher beta ETF, which is what you're describing. Or you can use leveraged ETFs, like switching out some of VOO for SSO (2x SP500) or UPRO (3x SP500), or even TQQQ. Lastly, you could use margin or other dry powder to leverage on upswing. Or some combination of these options.
I now have some alternatives in brokerage and IRA with negative correlation to use as dry powder in a correction or recession. Managed futures ETF and gold ETF that should retain or grow in value in downswing, that I can convert to high volatility ETF for any upswing opps.

Worse due to beta erosion. It’s just math. Say $BITX was a $100 and BTC goes down 25%, $BITX is now $50, down 50%, but to get back to $100 it has to go up 100%. So say BTC went down to 75k from 100k and then back to 100k— 33% gain—BITX would only go up to $88. If you look at graphs of older leveraged funds like TQQQ you see they never full make back the gains from their previous highs.

my AI overlord says: Turning $250K into $1 million is ambitious—but absolutely possible with the right mix of strategy, time, and risk tolerance. Let’s break down a few realistic paths someone could take, depending on how fast they want to get there and how much risk they’re willing to stomach:
🧠 Option 1: The Long Game (10–15 Years)
- Approach: Invest in a diversified portfolio of broad-market ETFs like VTI, QQQ, or SCHG.
- Expected Return: ~8–10% annually (historical average)
- Outcome: At 10% annual growth, $250K becomes $1M in ~15 years.
- Risk: Moderate. Market volatility, but historically reliable over time.
⚡ Option 2: Accelerated Growth (5–10 Years)
- Approach: Tilt toward high-growth sectors like tech (SMH, AIQ), clean energy (QCLN), or biotech (XBI).
- Expected Return: 12–15% annually (with higher volatility)
- Outcome: $250K could 4x in 8–9 years if trends hold.
- Risk: Higher. Sector-specific downturns can delay or derail progress.
🎯 Option 3: Aggressive Strategy (3–5 Years)
- Approach: Mix of individual high-growth stocks, 0DTE options, or leveraged ETFs like TQQQ or SOXL.
- Expected Return: Potentially 25–40%+ annually—but highly variable.
- Outcome: $250K could hit $1M in 3–4 years, but with serious drawdown risk.
- Risk: Very high. One bad year could cut the portfolio in half.
🏘️ Bonus Option: Real Estate or Business
- Approach: Use $250K as a down payment on income-generating property or seed capital for a business.
- Upside: Leverage and cash flow can accelerate returns.
- Risk: Depends on execution, market, and management.
If this were a real scenario, I’d suggest building a tiered plan: anchor with stable ETFs, layer in some growth, and carve out a small slice for high-risk/high-reward plays. Want to sketch out a sample portfolio or timeline based on one of these paths?

Sell all, reinvest all into TQQQ

TQQQ and SOXL

50:50 in UPRO and TQQQ and you will be caught up in no time!

I don't really pay attention to the moving averages because of how quickly it can swing due to the 3x nature of it. What I pay attention now is the total amount of the account that it makes up. I love the growth aspect of TQQQ but getting addicted to that and not taking your wins just increases your risk. If TQQQ grows to 50% or so of your account because you're letting it ride and one day the bottom drops out... there goes 50% of your account. 2021-2022 burned me bad so I had to figure out a new way.

The ratio I try to keep is 50% monthy dividend payers, 40% growth, 10% leveraged. The leveraged tends to grow quickly so every time the leveraged portion organically hits 15% of total account value I sell off that 5% and spread it around whatever it takes to keep that ratio in balance. That way the majority of the account is mostly stable, but if the market tanks and the leveraged funds sink hard its no more than 10% or so of the entire account. I also set stop losses pretty frequently on those. I've seen news break before that dropped TQQQ off a cliff, but my stop loss hit and I only lost a fraction of what I could have. Keeping the growth potential high but also limiting the downward as much as I can.
The thing that was hardest was changing my mindset away from # of shares to looking at it as a "cash pile." I was chasing shares for a long time and ended up eating some huge losses while I was figuring it out. But I started looking at it as the dollar value, and not share total, I was able to wrap my head around it growing as a percentage rather than obsessing being up or down on shares.

Last year, [I wrote this article](https://medium.datadriveninvestor.com/how-i-outperformed-the-market-by-130-because-of-artificial-intelligence-7d7a459a0081) explaining how AI and no-code backtesting tools give retail investors an unprecedented edge.
I likened it to Moody’s Manual, a series of publications on publicly traded stocks. [Warren Buffet made his fortune by going through 20,000 pages of these reports](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/warren-buffett-shares-earn-whopping-102900347.html), and found value stocks that other people were overlooking.
I claimed that AI is the modern-day Moody’s Manuals, and to prove it, I showcased my portfolio was at $36,382, which was up 49% year-to-date at the time.
[Pic: My returns last year from Jan 1st 2024 to Oct 1st 2024](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*34FI9cYfB0Bh1heI.jpeg)
I now have an update. From Jan 1st 2025 to July 5th 2025, my portfolio is up another 49%. My account is at $56,759 (up 49%) while the S&P 500 is up 6.04%.
[Pic: A screenshot of my Robinhood account](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*v-wEsx7wpHFiJIpYpog5fw@2x.jpeg)
In other words, I’m outperforming the market by 700% (8x). Here’s how I did it a second time.
# A Tool For the Modern-Day Warren Buffets
To beat the market for a second consecutive year, I relied on [NexusTrade](https://nexustrade.io/chat), a tool to process the thousands of stocks in the market and help me find the best ones for my trading strategy.
[Sign up for NexusTrade today for free!](https://nexustrade.io/chat)
[Pic: Using AI to query for stocks with specific fundamentals](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*LWTuwVCDMBJIdLwgKP5c6w.png)
Being a software engineer, I see first-hand the impact that AI is having on the world. Betting on the outperformance of AI stocks, I used NexusTrade to find fundamentally strong stocks within minutes.
[Pic: The list of stocks retrieved by the AI, which includes NVIDIA, Microsoft, Google, and Meta](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*rR62wWgfRRdAzFkucCAfeg.png)
The AI searches through fundamental data from EODHD, a high-quality data provider. By doing this, it gets accurate, data-backed answers to financial questions.
> Want high-quality fundamental data for your trading? [Sign up for EODHD today!](https://eodhd.com/pricing?via=austinstarks&ref1=nexustrade)
Personally, I chose to invest heavily in Google and NVIDIA. For NVIDIA, it is one of the fastest-growing stocks (of its size) that we have ever seen, with an astounding 40% compound annual growth rate for its revenue. It also has outstanding margins.
For Google, it owns powerhouses within the AI space, including Waymo, it’s self-driving cars, and Gemini, the best and most cost-effective series of LLMs out there.
[Despite all of the hype, Google BEATS OpenAI and remains the best AI company in the world.](https://medium.com/codex/despite-all-of-the-hype-google-beats-openai-and-remains-the-best-ai-company-in-the-world-404dd9da66e8)
But buying and holding these stocks alone wouldn’t have lead to my portfolio’s outperformance.
Nope. I had a much more aggressive trading strategy.
# Turning insights into trading strategies
Believing that the overall market would go up this year, but that these AI stocks will do even better, I transformed my stock choices into an aggressive trading strategy by using options.
I bought in-the-money, long-dated call options using 30% of my buying power. I then decided to wait.
I didn’t use indicators or technical analysis. I let time work its magic.
If the overall market went down, then my plan was to double-down **slowly** using shorter-dated options. At best, I’d like to buy 20% of my buying power in shorter-dated options every week. The market rarely goes straight down, and I could quickly buy and then sell short-dated options to recover my losses.
**It is important to note that this strategy is incredibly risky.** Even though I backtested similar strategies using leveraged ETFs, what happened in the past may not happen in the future. There is a legitimate chance of financial ruin if the market tanked for long-periods of time, or if I doubled-down too aggressively.
[Pic: The backtest results of a TQQQ trading strategy with similar rationale – click here to check out the exact trading rules](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*GIpSlIycB_PmF8CQ2L7Xzg.png)
The risk is clearly demonstrated earlier this year, [when my portfolio was down over 41% year-to-date.](https://medium.com/@austin-starks/i-lost-16-649-on-nvidia-heres-why-i-bought-more-7a035122e955)
However, I stuck to my trading strategy. Three months later, my account soared to all-time highs.
[Pic: My account is at $56,754, a 452% increase for all-time](https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/1*TNadeC1GGEBTLfnnULstfg@2x.jpeg)
The best part is that the majority of my portfolio is now in cash. I’m earning 4% APY with Robinhood gold with an account balance that’s more than 4x the initial value.
All of this has been possible due to AI and automation. Thanks NVIDIA!
# Concluding Thoughts
I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I cracked the code for a 0-risk trading strategy. But I am doing FAR better than the average investor.
I have boatloads of cash earning risk-free interest, call options in my favorite stocks, and a profitable trading strategy. NexusTrade has given me the ability to turn $10,000 over $56,000. I’m not a savant that’s looking at 30 different indicators. I’m using AI to do the work for me.
The best part is, you can too.
Sit down, use the free app, and learn how to be a data-driven algorithmic trader who earns tens of thousands of dollars.
Or get left behind and continue gambling based on whatever is trending on WallStreetBets.
The choice is up to you.

Just depends on your strategy. I have a good core of QQQI, SPYI, and AIPI that give me a significantly higher monthly cash flow into my Roth than would be normally possible. I use those dividends to buy SPMO, QQQ, SPY, and usually a leveraged fund like TQQQ or FNGU.
Once the leveraged funds grow to a certain percentage I take the profits and dump the gains back into either my regular indexes. The monthly dividends allow me to take on high-risk/high-reward positions without putting my underlying investment at undue risk while frequently capitalizing on the gains with traditional indexes. Everyone has a different method

lol only you can say if you are taking to much risk. I'm the wrong person to ask about risk. I have 2 IRA's. One is 89% in TQQQ and the other is 60/40 TQQQ/SOXL

I think you're on right track, but I would just describe it as overweighting when you expect market to go up following a correction.
There are multiple ways to do this. One is switching to a higher beta ETF, which is what you're describing. Or you can use leveraged ETFs, like switching out some of VOO for SSO (2x SP500) or UPRO (3x SP500), or even TQQQ. Lastly, you could use margin or other dry powder to leverage on upswing. Or some combination of these options.
I now have some alternatives in brokerage and IRA with negative correlation to use as dry powder in a correction or recession. Managed futures ETF and gold ETF that should retain or grow in value in downswing, that I can convert to high volatility ETF for any upswing opps.