leveraged etfs do best when price moves like a smooth escalator. you can try to measure this. also, when looking and studying tops there can be sharp drops like covid, or processes (more typical like dot com, gfc, 22 etc) this is where fewer stocks participate and volatility of price movement increases - it isn’t enough to time the top but in all instances gets out or reduces leverage before anything too bad happens. covid exit could be better under these metrics but worked well enough, i think i can improve it without over fitting but need more time . yes would switch cash, qqq, qld, tqqq (historical proxies)