GLDW vs QLD

GLDWCRoundhill Gold WeeklyPay ETF

QLDAProShares Ultra QQQ

In short

GLDW Gold, geared, on a payday schedule. GLDW targets 1.2 times the SPDR Gold Trust's weekly total return before fees and distributes weekly, a milder, week-by-week take on leverage in a cohort built around 3x daily resets.

QLD The 2x dial on the Nasdaq-100. QLD aims for twice the index's daily move, half the dose of the 3x crowd, and it has been running that playbook since 2006. The multiple resets every session.

Stated mandate

GLDW GLDW seeks weekly distributions and calendar-week returns equal to 1.2 times the weekly total return of the SPDR Gold Trust, before fees and expenses.

QLD The fund seeks daily investment results, before fees and expenses, equal to twice the daily performance of the Nasdaq-100 Index.

Why people hold it

• GLDW Gentle leverage by category standards: 1.2x, measured over a calendar week instead of a single day, so the compounding drag from daily resets doesn't apply the same way.roundhillinvestments.com
• Weekly payouts on a gold-linked fund, rare packaging in a corner of the market where most products pay nothing at all.roundhillinvestments.com
• 0.99% expense ratio, a touch below the typical leveraged bull fund and level with long-running names like QLD (0.98%) and DDM (0.96%).
• Bullion exposure comes through a 1940 Act fund tracking the largest US gold trust, not a futures roll or a physical vault account you manage yourself.

• QLD Costs 0.89% net of a waiver through September 30, 2027 (0.96% gross), below the leveraged-bull category median and under Ultra stablemates ROM (0.93%) and DDM (0.95%).
• Hits its stated daily 2x mark with very little drift, one of the tighter implementations among the roughly 100 leveraged bull funds in its group.
• A multi-billion-dollar, actively traded fund, so entering and exiting rarely means hunting for the other side of the trade.
• Trading since June 2006, which makes it one of the longest-running leveraged equity funds on the US shelf rather than a recent product-shelf experiment.

Worth knowing

• GLDW Payouts can include return of capital, meaning part of a distribution may be your own principal coming back rather than investment income.
• Leverage runs both directions: down weeks in gold hit 1.2x too, and results over stretches longer than one week can drift from that multiple.
• A small, lightly traded fund launched in 2025, so there's little history to judge and bid-ask spreads can be wider than in the category's veterans.

• QLD The 2x objective covers one day only. Hold longer and daily resets plus compounding can push results away from twice the index's move over that stretch, in either direction.proshares.com
• Magnification runs both ways: a down day in the Nasdaq-100 lands on shareholders at roughly double size, same as an up day.
• Cheap for geared exposure, still well above a plain unleveraged Nasdaq-100 tracker. The waiver is set to lapse September 30, 2027, after which the 0.96% gross rate applies unless renewed.

Full GLDW profile⁠

Full QLD profile⁠