A retail investor posting on Reddit under the handle Efficient_Carry8646 says he started with $50,000, handed it to a financial advisor who grew it to $450,000 by 2017, then took control and pointed the whole thing at ProShares UltraPro QQQ (NASDAQ:TQQQ), the 3x daily-reset leveraged Nasdaq-100 ETF. By May 2026 he posted screenshots showing the account had crossed $10 million. TQQQ has returned roughly 3,810% over ten years against the Nasdaq-100 proxy QQQ’s roughly 564%, a spread that only widens when daily leverage compounds inside a long directional regime. Year to date in 2026, TQQQ is up about 44% while QQQ is up about 17%.
The mechanism behind the run
The vehicle for this trade was a rule set called 9Sig, written by Jason Kelly, which targets 9% quarterly portfolio growth using a 60/40 mix of TQQQ and bonds. The system mechanically buys TQQQ when it lags and trims when it sprints. The bond sleeve is dry powder spent at quarterly rebalances, which is how Efficient_Carry8646’s allocation drifted to 95% TQQQ at the absolute bottom of the 2022 bear market. ProShares charges 0.82% annually for the financing and swap infrastructure that resets exposure every day, which works on the way up and grinds you down in choppy tape where the index ends flat but the path is jagged.
Then came the part that separates a normal 9Sig outcome from a $10 million one. In 2020, during the COVID crash, he took a $300,000 home equity loan against his house and shoveled the proceeds into TQQQ at the lows. Leverage on top of leverage. By 2022 the account had swelled to $5.2 million, and the bear market then cut it to $1.8 million, a 65% loss.
Two crashes, one rule, and a post titled “Relax”
He held. When the 2025 tariff panic dragged the portfolio from a recovery high down to $3.7 million, he wrote a Reddit thread. “I’ve been through this before. 2018, 2020, and 2022. In 2022, I went from $5.2m to $1.8m. Every one of those crashes were for a different reason but the headlines read the same, doom and gloom.”
On May 1, 2026, the day the $10 million screenshot landed, wallstreetbets sentiment hit 90 with 1,348 upvotes and 266 comments in one morning snapshot. A thread asked whether “108% vs S&P 500 ~40% over 2 years” was timing, leverage, or luck. The honest answer is all three.
What would have to be true for the next ten years to rhyme with the last ten
The Nasdaq-100 is concentrated in a way it has rarely been before. Morningstar notes the top 10 US stocks now account for over one-third of the market, up from 18% a decade ago, with the Magnificent Seven dragging index returns and index risk together. Vanguard’s 2026 outlook says US tech can keep its momentum but adds that “risks are growing amid this exuberance, even if it appears rational by some metrics,” with average US stock returns projected at 4% to 5% over the next five to ten years. If that forecast is anywhere near right, 3x daily leverage stops being a wealth engine and becomes a volatility tax.
The indicators worth watching are concrete. Nasdaq-100 realized volatility, because TQQQ’s decay is a function of variance, visible in the QQQ one-week move of about -3% that produced a roughly -11% week in TQQQ. AI capex commitments from the hyperscalers, because Goldman’s outlook frames the equity story as a question of whether “AI-fueled growth can compensate for underlying economic and labor market weakness.”. And the spread between TQQQ’s ten-year return and QQQ’s, because when that gap stops widening, the daily-reset math has flipped on you, and the system that built Efficient_Carry8646’s $10 million will be quietly taking it back. The 9Sig rules are indifferent to the regime.
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