The leveraged single-stock ETF boom is showing signs of a shakeout, with a flood of new products colliding with shrinking average fund sizes and a surge in closures.
By mid-August, 244 leveraged ETFs had launched in the U.S., already surpassing the 229 introduced during all of 2025, per a Reuters report. Yet the average leveraged ETF has shrunk from $272.2 million in assets at the end of 2024 to just $63.3 million, according to Morningstar Direct, cited by Reuters. Half now have less than $7 million in AUM.
The mismatch is becoming harder to ignore. Morningstar says 63 leveraged single-stock ETFs have closed in 2026, versus only three in 2025. Separately, Kepler Cheuvreux data cited by the Financial Times puts single-stock leveraged fund delistings at 122 in the past 12 months, underscoring the industry's accelerating churn.
NVDL Shows What the Winners Look Like
Assets are increasingly concentrating in established products tied to high-profile, volatile stocks.
The GraniteShares 2x Long NVDA Daily ETF (NASDAQ: NVDL) is the standout, with about $3.9 billion in assets. The fund targets twice Nvidia Corp's (NASDAQ: NVDA) daily return, making it a direct beneficiary of continued enthusiasm for AI and semiconductor stocks.
Other major leveraged vehicles include the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X ETF (NYSE: SOXL) and its bearish counterpart Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bear 3X ETF (NYSE: SOXS), which provide 3x and -3x daily exposure to semiconductors. SOXL has also attracted enormous trading interest despite the sector's violent swings, and is among the largest ETFs in terms of average trading volumes.
The broader leveraged universe extends to products such as ProShares UltraPro QQQ (NASDAQ: TQQQ), GraniteShares 2x Long MU Daily ETF (NASDAQ: MULL), GraniteShares 2x Long Dell Daily ETF (NASDAQ: DLLL) and GraniteShares 2x Long Intel Daily ETF (NASDAQ: INTW). Each of these is among the ETFs with the highest trading interest.
Survival of the Fittest
The pressure is particularly acute among newer, smaller products. Industry analysts estimate that a new ETF generally needs $50 million-$100 million within its first year or two to become economically sustainable. Corgi Invest, meanwhile, has launched 127 leveraged or inverse single-stock products this year, but its funds average only about $1 million in assets, noted Reuters.
The risk is not merely commercial. GraniteShares liquidated a leveraged Lucid Group Inc. (NASDAQ: LCID)-linked ETF after Lucid shares fell as much as 51% intraday on July 14, per Reuters, before recovering to close down about 16% when the company denied a report that its restructuring adviser had floated bankruptcy — an illustration of how a violent round trip in an underlying stock can devastate a daily-reset leveraged product.
The takeaway for investors: the leveraged ETF boom may not be disappearing, but it is becoming a winner-take-most market. As launches proliferate, liquidity, AUM and the strength of the underlying trend could increasingly determine which products survive, and which become the next closure statistic.
