[paulpauper]

not as good. margin has high borrow fees and path dependency. options are better but still has a lot of fees, slippage, and needs to be adjusted to target appropriate delta. a 3x fund would make it so much easier and cheaper.

[Rebelgecko]

At least with IB you're looking at margin rates in the 1-2% neighborhood (which is potentially more like 0.6-1% after you take the tax deduction). Depending on your tax bracket, that's actually cheaper than the expense ratios of most (all?) leveraged funds, and let's you avoid the wonkiness that comes with holding leveraged ETFs over time