Eric Balchunas Says Dip Buyers Keep Piling Into an Nvidia Fund Down 47% in a Month
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“Lot of dip buying in the 2x Nvidia ETF.. the more it goes down the more they put in.” That’s how Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, described the action in the GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NASDAQ:NVDL) in a post on X on Friday morning, Nov. 13.
The fund closed Thursday down 49.23% over the past month. By late Friday morning, that one-month loss had extended to 53.75%, with shares at $16.92. Retail cash is speeding up into one of the market’s most volatile products just as NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) faces a leadership shock and an earnings report days away.
Buyers Add More Every Time the Fund Falls
Balchunas tied the NVDL buying to a broader rush into stocks. “It was another all-in equity buying spree across ETFs past two days,” he wrote, adding that “$13b came in yest, all but one of top 20 was equity.” Given the post’s timing, “yest” most likely refers to Nov. 12.
That was the day Jensen Huang resigned as CEO of Nvidia after coming under scrutiny for two extramarital affairs, according to CNBC. The selling carried into Friday, with The Wall Street Journal reporting that Nvidia slid again as investors prepared for more fallout.
By late Friday morning, Nvidia was down 4.63% on the day at $158.50, while NVDL was down 8.89%. Those numbers show exactly what the fund is designed to do.
Why a 2x Fund Can Lose Far More Than Double
NVDL aims to deliver twice Nvidia’s return for a single day, then resets and starts fresh the next morning. Over one session, the math works roughly as advertised. Over weeks and months, compounding pulls the fund’s results away from a simple doubling.
The cause is volatility decay. When a stock swings, a leveraged fund loses ground on each round trip, because a big percentage drop needs an even bigger percentage gain to recover. Volatile markets grind that drag in.
Year to date, Nvidia is down 14.81%. Doubling that loss would come to 29.62%, yet NVDL is down 42.32% over the same stretch. Over the past week, Nvidia fell 12.72% while NVDL fell 24.8%. Over one month through Thursday’s close, Nvidia dropped 27.28%.
Owning it isn’t cheap either. NVDL carries a net expense ratio of 1.64%, according to its Oct. 28 prospectus.
The bull case for dip buyers is easy to see in the long-run numbers. Since December 2022, NVDL is still up 1196.05%, riding Nvidia’s AI boom. The case against is the decay math above: a sharp rebound helps, but a sideways, volatile recovery can keep wearing away the fund even if Nvidia steadies.
Nvidia’s Earnings Clock Ticks Toward Nov. 17
Nvidia’s next earnings release is scheduled for Nov. 17, after the market close. In a leveraged fund, the stock’s reaction the next day gets roughly doubled in either direction.
The fundamentals heading in have been strong. For the quarter reported Aug. 26, revenue hit $96.22 billion, up 105.8% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $2.22 topped the $2.0887 consensus. The company guided current-quarter revenue to $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%.
The open question is whether numbers can offset the management turbulence. Morningstar summed up the mood in a headline Thursday: “Nvidia Has Been the Market’s Golden Goose. Now It’s in Crisis.”
Balchunas Flagged This Exact Pattern Two Weeks Ago
This isn’t the first leveraged dip-buying wave Balchunas has tracked. On Nov. 2, he said leveraged long ETFs had taken in a record of over $12 billion in two weeks of dip buying, while the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3x Shares (NYSEARCA:SOXL) sat down 45%.
Together, the two posts point to a consistent retail strategy: buy leverage harder as it falls. Heading into Nvidia’s report, watch whether NVDL keeps drawing new money and how Nvidia’s board addresses the CEO vacancy. Those answers could decide whether this round of dip buying looks early or expensive.
Data Sources
- Balchunas flags NVDL dip buying: Source of Eric Balchunas’s Nov. 13 quotes on dip buying in the 2x Nvidia ETF and the $13 billion equity ETF inflow day, plus timing context for “yest.”
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