Watching the TMF screen while everything else feels like a blur

Getting stuck in the math of my TMF holding

I really thought I understood the math when I first started buying TMF. It felt straightforward enough—a triple-leveraged bet on 20-year US Treasuries. I bought in at 54 dollars, dropping about 9 million won, thinking that if rates just budged in my favor, the math would take care of itself. Then, like a lot of people who get impatient, I saw it hit 58.88 dollars and threw in another 5 million won. Now, sitting here looking at the screen, the price is fluctuating around 57.77. My average is somewhere around 54.98. It’s not a huge loss, but it’s not the profit I had mentally banked on, either. Checking the brokerage app has become this weird, repetitive ritual I do during lunch breaks, even though I know nothing has fundamentally shifted in the macro environment since this morning.

The noise around TMF associates and industry talk

Sometimes I wonder if I’m reading too much into the news. You look up TMF and you keep running into these analyst reports from TMF Associates—mostly talk about satellite industry stuff, which has absolutely nothing to do with my bond ETF. It’s confusing, honestly. I keep searching for news on the Direxion Daily 20+ Year Treasury Bull 3X Shares, but then I end up reading about Tim Farrar’s take on SpaceX’s latest test flight or some satellite acquisition drama. It makes me feel like I’m looking at the wrong map. I’m just trying to figure out if I should hold or if I’m just waiting for a volatility decay to eat up my remaining margin. The market noise feels so disconnected from the actual red numbers in my account.

Why I keep looking at these leverage numbers

There’s this constant chatter about ‘Seohak ants’—the Korean retail investors who keep pouring money into these leveraged funds. I read that we have something like 16.8 trillion won tied up in these top 50 leveraged picks, and here I am, just a small part of that massive, slightly panicked group. It’s strange to see TMF, SOXL, and all these other ticker symbols listed as the most held items. Does it mean we all know something, or are we all just following the same sinking ship? I remember thinking that maybe the 3x leverage was too aggressive when I started, but now that the price is stuck in this limbo, the risk doesn’t feel like an abstract concept anymore. It just feels like a nagging itch in the back of my mind.

Watching the balance without really knowing the move

I spent a good hour yesterday just staring at my average unit price. It’s funny how a few decimal points can change your mood for the entire evening. I have friends who keep telling me to check the yield curves, but that feels like reading tea leaves at this point. I keep seeing headlines about the ‘top 10 holdings’ all being hit, and yet, here I am, still holding on, hoping for that one swing that justifies the trouble. Is it really a strategy, or am I just stubborn? I don’t even know what I’d do if it hit 60 dollars tomorrow. Sell half? Keep riding it until the decay makes it worthless? I just close the app and go back to work, pretending that the 160,000 won fluctuation doesn’t matter, even though it’s all I’ve been thinking about all day.