DFEN

DFEN is a daily 3x leveraged bet on the Dow Jones U.S. Select Aerospace and Defense Index, a market-cap-weighted index of US-listed aerospace and defense stocks. Unleveraged exposure to the same index can be found in ITA — a fund from BlackRock. The geared 3x nature of DFEN is designed to magnify the daily performance of the index, not to return 300% of the index performance over extended periods of time. Due to compounding and the daily reset function, the fund is meant to be a trading vehicle for investors to make short-term bets on the direction of the aerospace and defense industry and not a long-term investment strategy. Compounding becomes more pronounced and more of a concern as holding periods increase, and the fund is likely to stray from the returns of the underlying index in such cases. Due to the fund's day trading personality, trading volume and bid/ask spread are more important cost considerations than expense ratio.