In July, Morningstar published a column, "These 15 Funds Cost Investors Billions Over the Last Decade." The list was revealing. Many of the biggest wealth destroyers were inverse ETFs, products designed to deliver one, two or three times the inverse daily return of a market benchmark.
Among the funds highlighted were ETFs betting against semiconductor stocks, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq-100, often with leverage. Given the strong performance of U.S. equities over much of the past decade, these strategies proved costly for investors.
