Compound Annual Growth Rates for Leveraged Versus Unleveraged Exchange Traded Funds Exchanged Traded Funds (ETFs) offer self-directed investors an easy-to-use tool for growing their net worth. You can think of an ETF as a basket of securities that can be bought and sold just like the stock shares for an individual company. If the basket of securities for an ETF goes up over time, then shares for the ETF shares can also rise. Of course, ETF share prices can also decline over time when their underlying basket of securities fail to rise or even just do not grow from their purchase price. The objective for self-directed investors who want to grow their net worth with ETFs is to invest and hold shares in ETFs whose prices are increasing instead of declining most of the time. Leveraged ETFs are designed for investors who seek to have their invested net worth grow faster than an underlying basket of securities. The greater the leverage for an ETF, the greater potential for accel