TQQQ and the Bold Women Betting Big on Tech: Meet the Fearless Female Traders Making Waves in Leveraged ETFs

There is a new kind of power player on Wall Street, and she does not look like the stereotypical trader barking orders on a chaotic exchange floor. She is a 34-year-old marketing director in Austin trading from her phone during lunch. She is a retired nurse in Phoenix who taught herself technical analysis on YouTube. She is a Gen Z college grad in Brooklyn who put her first bonus into a triple-leveraged fund and watched it triple in three months.

The fund in question? TQQQ, the ProShares UltraPro QQQ, a leveraged exchange-traded fund that seeks to deliver three times the daily performance of the Nasdaq-100 Index. And while it has long been a favorite of aggressive retail traders, a growing number of women are claiming their seat at the table, rewriting the narrative about who gets to take big financial risks and why.

What Exactly Is TQQQ, and Why Is Everyone Talking About It?

Before we dive into the stories of the women shaking up the leveraged ETF space, let us break down the basics. TQQQ is a leveraged ETF managed by ProShares that aims to return 300% of the daily performance of the Nasdaq-100. That means if the Nasdaq-100 goes up 1% in a single day, TQQQ is designed to go up roughly 3%. The flip side, of course, is equally dramatic: a 1% drop in the index translates to approximately a 3% loss in TQQQ.

The fund has become one of the most actively traded ETFs in the world, with daily volumes regularly exceeding 50 million shares. Its appeal is straightforward. In a bull market, especially one driven by tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta, TQQQ can deliver outsized returns that make traditional index funds look sleepy by comparison. In 2023 alone, TQQQ surged over 200% as the AI boom sent tech stocks soaring. And while 2024 and early 2025 brought more volatility, the fund has remained a magnet for traders who believe in the long-term dominance of technology.

But TQQQ is not a buy-and-forget investment. Because it resets daily, a phenomenon known as “volatility decay” can erode returns over time, especially in choppy, sideways markets. This is why financial professionals often describe it as a tactical trading instrument rather than a long-term holding. It rewards conviction, timing, and discipline, qualities that the women profiled here have in abundance.

The Women Rewriting the Playbook

For decades, the world of aggressive trading was presented as an almost exclusively male domain. Financial media featured men in suits, men on trading floors, men shouting about puts and calls. But data tells a different story. A 2024 CNBC report highlighted that women are the fastest-growing demographic in active investing, with self-directed brokerage accounts opened by women increasing by over 40% since 2020.

Among them is Priya Sharma, a 38-year-old software engineer in Seattle who started trading TQQQ in early 2023. “I had been investing passively in index funds for years,” Sharma says. “But when I started learning about leveraged products, something clicked. I understood the math. I understood the risk. And I decided I was comfortable with it.” Sharma now allocates about 15% of her portfolio to tactical TQQQ positions, entering when technical indicators suggest a strong uptrend and exiting before prolonged pullbacks. Her approach has netted her a six-figure gain over the past two years.

Then there is Danielle Carter, a 29-year-old financial content creator based in Atlanta whose TikTok videos about leveraged ETFs have garnered millions of views. Carter does not sugarcoat the risks. “I always tell my audience: this is not free money. TQQQ can drop 20% in a week. I have seen it happen to my own portfolio,” she explains. “But I also show them what disciplined position sizing looks like, how to set stop-losses, and why you never put money into TQQQ that you cannot afford to lose.” Her transparency has earned her a loyal following of young women who say she makes complex financial instruments feel accessible without dumbing them down.

And it is not just younger women. Barbara Okafor, a 56-year-old retired nurse in Phoenix, started trading leveraged ETFs after watching her conservative bond portfolio barely keep pace with inflation during the pandemic era. “I spent thirty years taking care of other people,” Okafor says. “When I retired, I decided it was time to take care of my financial future with the same intensity.” She enrolled in an online trading course, joined a women-focused investing community on Discord, and began making small TQQQ trades with money she had specifically set aside for higher risk plays. “My first year, I made more in trading gains than I had earned in interest over the previous five years combined,” she recalls.

What the Experts Want You to Know

For all the success stories, financial advisors urge caution, and for good reason. Leveraged ETFs like TQQQ are among the most misunderstood products in retail investing, and the consequences of misunderstanding them can be severe.

“The biggest mistake I see is people treating TQQQ like a regular stock or index fund,” says Dr. Monica Chen, a certified financial planner and professor of finance at NYU Stern School of Business. “They buy it and hold it for months or even years without understanding that daily rebalancing can cause significant deviation from the expected 3x return over longer periods. In a volatile market, you can be right about the direction and still lose money.”

Chen points to 2022 as a cautionary tale. The Nasdaq-100 fell roughly 33% that year, but TQQQ lost nearly 80% of its value. Investors who held through the entire drawdown needed the fund to gain nearly 400% just to break even. Many never recovered their losses because they sold at the bottom in a panic.

Financial educator and author Tiffany Aliche, known as The Budgetnista, has spoken publicly about the importance of financial literacy before taking on leveraged products. “I love that more women are getting into investing,” Aliche has noted. “But I want to make sure they are building on a solid foundation. Before you touch something like TQQQ, make sure you have an emergency fund, make sure you understand basic portfolio allocation, and make sure you are only using money that is truly discretionary.”

The Psychology of Bold Investing

What drives someone to put real money into an instrument that can swing 10% or more in a single day? According to behavioral finance research, it is not recklessness. In fact, studies suggest that women who engage in active trading tend to be more methodical than their male counterparts. A well-cited Fidelity study found that women investors, on average, outperform men by 0.4% annually, largely because they trade less impulsively, do more research before entering positions, and are more likely to stick to a plan.

This discipline translates remarkably well to leveraged ETF trading, where emotional decision-making can be catastrophic. Priya Sharma describes her process as almost clinical. “I have a checklist. Literally, a physical checklist on a sticky note next to my monitor. Is the 50-day moving average above the 200-day? Is RSI below 70? Is there a clear catalyst, like an earnings season or a Fed decision, that could drive momentum? If I cannot check every box, I do not enter the trade. Period.”

Danielle Carter echoes this sentiment. “The women in my community are not gamblers. They are strategists. They journal their trades. They review what went wrong. I see less ego and more accountability in the women-focused trading groups than in almost any mixed space I have been in.”

This is not to romanticize the experience. Every woman interviewed for this piece spoke candidly about losses. Sharma described a week in early 2024 when a surprise inflation report wiped out three months of gains in four trading sessions. Okafor recalled a period where she considered quitting entirely after a particularly painful drawdown. “But I had defined my risk in advance,” she says. “I knew what my maximum loss could be because I had position-sized properly. It hurt, but it did not ruin me. And that made all the difference.”

How to Approach TQQQ If You Are Curious

If you have read this far and feel a spark of curiosity, here is what the women and experts in this piece collectively recommend for anyone considering dipping a toe into leveraged ETFs.

Start with education, not money. Spend at least a few weeks understanding how daily rebalancing works, what volatility decay means, and how leveraged ETFs have performed in different market conditions (bull runs, corrections, and sideways chop). Paper trading platforms allow you to simulate trades with no real money on the line.

Size your positions conservatively. Most experienced TQQQ traders recommend allocating no more than 5% to 15% of your total portfolio to leveraged plays. This way, even a worst-case scenario does not derail your broader financial goals.

Have clear entry and exit rules. Decide in advance what signals will trigger a buy and, crucially, what will trigger a sell. Many successful traders use stop-loss orders to automate exits and remove emotion from the equation.

Think in terms of campaigns, not forever holds. TQQQ is most effective as a tactical tool. Enter when you see a clear setup. Take profits when your targets are hit. Step aside during periods of high uncertainty. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it fund.

Build community. The women profiled in this piece all credit peer communities with keeping them grounded and accountable. Whether it is a Discord server, a local investing club, or a trusted friend who also trades, having people to discuss strategy with is invaluable.

The Bigger Picture: Women, Wealth, and Risk

The rise of women in leveraged ETF trading is about more than market returns. It is part of a broader cultural shift in how women relate to money, risk, and financial agency. For generations, women were told (implicitly and explicitly) that investing was someone else’s job, that they should prioritize saving over growing wealth, and that “risky” financial instruments were not for them.

That narrative is crumbling. Women now control an estimated $11 trillion in investable assets in the United States alone, a figure projected to grow to $30 trillion by 2030 according to McKinsey. As more women build wealth and financial confidence, it is natural that some will gravitate toward higher-octane instruments like TQQQ. The key, as every expert and trader in this story emphasizes, is doing so with eyes wide open.

“I do not want to be the person who tells women to be careful,” says Danielle Carter with a laugh. “Women are always being told to be careful. What I want to say is: be informed. Be strategic. And then be as bold as you want to be. Your money, your rules.”

Whether TQQQ is right for you depends entirely on your financial situation, risk tolerance, and willingness to put in the work. But if the women in this story prove anything, it is that fearless does not mean reckless. It means prepared.