Nothing personal, Rooster. I know a guy who lost over $10 million using a leveraged ETF to bet that natural gas prices would rise, in early 2009. If he had just used futures contracts, he would 'only' have lost $7.0 million. The promoters actually dropped by his office and congratulated him on having such big balls. Their short leverage nat gas ETF traded at under 1% of its value three years before. Their long fund would not have come close to making up the difference. They keep doing negative splits to paper over the truth. As a result, I researched the topic. People have done peer-reviewed papers supporting what I told you. I would be happy to share.
This article is aimed at introducing mutual fund investors to good old basic index and sector ETF's which contain nothing more than the underlying stocks.
The Standard & Poors composite index (SPY) beats the living tar out of most mutual funds with very little costs.
To those considering ETF's, don't throw the baby out with Kennard's bath water.;-)
And Kennard, where's my share of your cocktail!