Ten thousand dollars in Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (NYSEARCA:SOXL) on May 27, 2025 was worth about $131,000 thirteen months later, and almost nobody you know actually held it the whole way.
That is the punchline and the problem
The fund closed at $225.79 on May 26, 2026 against a $17.24 starting price on May 27, 2025, a 1,209.99% gain on the exact one-year window the headlines have been quoting. The year-to-date number is nearly as large. SOXL opened 2026 at $47.24 and is up 377.96% through May 26.
Most of that happened in a few violent stretches, including a single trading day on May 26 worth 18.49% and a week of 48.65% that came after months of pain. If you owned this for the run, you are a hero in your group chat. If you sold in March, which a lot of people did, you watched the screenshot economy from the outside.