Retail Traders Double Down on a 2x Nvidia Fund Down 54%

The GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NVDL) had lost 53.75% over one month by late Friday morning, Nov. 13, and retail money kept arriving anyway. Shares traded at $16.92. Eric Balchunas, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, put it plainly on X: "Lot of dip buying in the 2x Nvidia ETF.. the more it goes down the more they put in."

The timing is awkward. Jensen Huang resigned as Nvidia CEO on Nov. 12, according to CNBC, after scrutiny over two extramarital affairs. The Wall Street Journal reported the selling carried into Friday. By late morning, Nvidia stock was down 4.63% on the day at $158.50; NVDL was down 8.89%. The gap between those two numbers is the fund working exactly as designed.

Balchunas tied the NVDL flows to a wider equity rush. "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, the day Huang resigned.

Why Does a 2x Fund Fall Faster Than Double?

NVDL targets twice Nvidia's return for a single day, then resets each morning. Over one session, the arithmetic holds. Over weeks, volatility decay takes over, because a large percentage drop requires an even larger gain to recover, and leveraged funds bleed on every round trip.

The year-to-date numbers show the drag. Nvidia is down 14.81% in 2026; a simple doubling would be 29.62%, yet NVDL is down 42.32%. Over the past week, Nvidia fell 12.72% while NVDL fell 24.8%. Through Thursday's close, Nvidia had dropped 27.28% over one month. The fund also charges a net expense ratio of 1.64%, per its Oct. 28 prospectus.

The bulls have one number of their own. Since December 2022, NVDL is up 1,196.05%, riding Nvidia's AI boom. The bears have the decay math: a sideways, choppy recovery can keep eroding the fund even if Nvidia steadies.

What Does the Nov. 17 Earnings Report Decide?

Nvidia reports earnings on Nov. 17 after the close. In a 2x fund, the next day's reaction arrives roughly doubled in either direction.

The fundamentals heading in remain strong. For the quarter reported Aug. 26, revenue reached $96.22 billion, up 105.8% year over year, and non-GAAP EPS of $2.22 beat the $2.0887 consensus. Management guided current-quarter revenue to $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%. The open question is whether any of that offsets the management crisis. Morningstar's Thursday headline captured the mood: "Nvidia Has Been the Market's Golden Goose. Now It's in Crisis."

Is This the First Leveraged Dip-Buying Wave?

No. On Nov. 2, Balchunas reported that leveraged long ETFs had taken in a record of more than $12 billion in two weeks of dip buying, even as the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3x Shares (SOXL) sat down 45%. The two posts describe one consistent retail strategy: buy leverage harder as it falls.

Nvidia has hired an outside firm to search for Huang's replacement. Whether NVDL keeps drawing new money, and how the board handles the vacancy, will decide whether this round of dip buying looks early or expensive.