The world of ETFs beyond the S&P 500 — semiconductor, AI, China, India, Shariah and Bursa ETFs

Once you understand S&P 500 ETFs, the next question usually comes on its own. “Is there an ETF for chip companies?” “How do I invest in China or India?” “Is SPUS the only Shariah ETF?”

The answer is yes, there’s more. The US alone has thousands of ETFsETF (Exchange Traded Fund)A fund that holds many stocks at once, and trades just like a regular stock.See it in the glossary →, and almost every market story has one of its own. Semiconductors, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, uranium, defence, China, India, Korea, Vietnam. There’s even a Malaysia ETF listed in New York.

This page takes you on a tour of that world. We’ll look at themed and sector ETFs, country ETFs, Shariah ETFs, dividend ETFs, ETFs listed on Bursa, and one type of ETF beginners should stay away from.

But there’s one thing to understand before we start. The narrower an ETF’s holdings, the more exciting its story, and the further it can fall. You’ll see this pattern repeat in every section.

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Before we start: rice and side dishes

The easiest way to make sense of all these ETFs is to think about a plate of food.

Broad ETFs are the rice. An S&P 500 or whole-world ETF holds hundreds or thousands of companies across many industries. It’s the base of the plate. Not exciting, but it fills you up.

Themed, sector and country ETFs are the side dishes. Sambal, fried chicken, vegetables. They make the plate tastier and more colourful. But nobody eats a whole plate of sambal.

Type	Examples	How many companies	What moves the price
Broad ETF	VOO, VT	500 to over 10,000	The economy as a whole
Sector or themed ETF	SMH, CIBR	25 to 150	The fortunes of one industry
Country ETF	INDA, EWY	27 to 600	One country’s economy, government and currency

Many investors build a portfolio like this: most of it in broad ETFs, and a small slice for themes they genuinely understand. How big that slice should be is up to you. The manage your portfolio tutorial has the rough limits many people use.

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Part 1 — Big indexes besides the S&P 500

Before we get into themes, there are three other broad ETFs people often ask about. All three are still “rice”, just on plates of different sizes.

ETF	What it holds	Companies	Yearly fee	Top three holdings
QQQ / QQQM	Nasdaq-100: the 100 biggest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq exchange	~104	QQQ 0.18%, QQQM 0.15%	NVDA 8.2%, AAPL 7.4%, MSFT 5.6%
VTI	Almost every listed US company, big and small	3,514	0.03%	NVDA 6.9%, AAPL 6.3%, MSFT 5.1%
VT	Companies across the whole world, US and non-US	10,180	0.06%	NVDA 4.3%, AAPL 3.8%, MSFT 3.2%

QQQ and QQQM hold the same thing. Both track the Nasdaq-100 and are issued by the same company, Invesco. The difference is that QQQM launched in 2020 as a version for long-term investors. Its fee is lower, and so is its price per unit: around USD307, compared with around USD745 for QQQ. QQQ is traded more often by short-term traders.

Notice one thing in that table. The Nasdaq-100 puts almost half its money (47%) into just 10 companies, most of them tech. So even though it’s an “index”, it’s far more concentrated than VT, where even the biggest company is only 4.3%.

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Part 2 — Themed and sector ETFs

In the Investment Themes tutorial, you saw Moomoo group stocks by story, like AI or silver. But a theme in the app is just a list. You can’t buy the theme itself.

A themed ETF is a way to “buy the story” in one purchase. A fund manager picks the related companies, packages them into one ETF, and sells it on the exchange just like a normal stock.

How to find themed ETFs in Moomoo

Moomoo has a dedicated place for ETFs. Open the Markets tab and choose ETFs in the top row (next to MY, HK, CN and SG). This screen has three useful sections: Index ETFs for the big index ETFs, Thematic ETFs for ETFs by theme, and ETF Tools, which has a Screener and Compare.

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1. 2All themes
2. aETFs by theme
3. bScreener and Compare

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Tap the arrow at the end of Thematic ETFs, and you’ll see a long list of themes. Here’s part of what was in the app on 28 September 2026:

Open any theme, for example Semiconductor ETFs, and you get a list of every ETF in it. But look at the top row in this screenshot. SOXL is a 3x leveraged ETF, and it sits at the top because the list is sorted by that day’s gain. The theme list doesn’t separate ordinary ETFs from high-risk ones. You have to read the full names yourself.

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1. aLeveraged 3x
2. bOrdinary ETF

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A full example: semiconductor ETFs, SMH and SOXX

Semiconductors are chips. Phones, cars, washing machines and AI data centres all need them. That’s why this theme has become one of the most popular since the AI boom.

The two biggest semiconductor ETFs are SMH from VanEck and SOXX from iShares.

	SMH	SOXX
Companies	25	29
Yearly fee	0.35%	0.33%
Biggest holding	NVDA 19.1%	Intel 9.7%
Second and third	TSM 9.2%, AMD 5.8%	AMD 9.5%, Micron 8.0%
Top 10 combined	67%	—

Both ETFs are called “semiconductor”. But what’s inside them isn’t the same. SMH puts almost a fifth of its money into NVIDIA alone, and two-thirds into 10 companies. SOXX caps how much each company can weigh, so its holdings are more even. That means if NVIDIA falls hard, SMH will feel it more than SOXX.

There’s one more thing many people miss. If you already hold VOO, you already hold NVIDIA. NVIDIA is the biggest company in the S&P 500, about 8% of VOO. When you add SMH on top of VOO, you’re not adding new companies. You’re adding more NVIDIA.

You can see all of this for yourself by putting SMH, SOXX and VOO into Compare:

And look at these two numbers. SMH fell 33.5% over the whole of 2022. In the year to September 2026, it rose 89%. Both numbers come from the same ETF. That’s what a themed ETF looks like: it rises fast, and it falls fast.

A catalogue of other themes

Here are some of the other themes that have their own ETFs. The last column is what you should notice before considering that ETF.

Theme	Example ETF	Companies	Fee	Biggest holdings	What to notice
AI and robotics	BOTZ	65	0.68%	Keyence 10.8%, NVDA 9.4%	Many non-US companies, like Keyence (Japan) and ABB (Switzerland)
AI and data	AIQ	96	0.68%	PLTR 3.9%, MSFT 3.6%, ORCL 3.4%	Many companies you already own through the S&P 500
Cybersecurity	CIBR	46	0.58%	Palo Alto 9.5%, Fortinet 8.4%, CrowdStrike 8.0%	Three companies hold a quarter of the fund
Uranium and nuclear	URA	64	0.69%	Cameco 22.1%	One company is over a fifth of the fund
Aerospace and defence	ITA	53	0.37%	GE Aerospace 20.4%, RTX 16.4%	Two companies hold over a third of the fund
Clean energy	ICLN	145	0.39%	First Solar 8.2%	Still half its 2021 peak (read below)
Innovation (actively managed)	ARKK	46	0.75%	Tesla 9.2%	The manager picks stocks, it doesn’t follow an index

There are also ETFs that slice the market by big sectorSectorA group of companies doing the same kind of business.See it in the glossary →. Their fees are much lower because they’re essentially cutting the S&P 500 into pieces.

Sector	Example ETF	Companies	Fee	Top three holdings
Technology	XLK	77	0.08%	NVDA 15.2%, AAPL 13.9%, MSFT 10.7%
Technology (broader)	VGT	323	0.09%	NVDA 17.7%, AAPL 15.8%, MSFT 11.5%
Healthcare	XLV	64	0.08%	Eli Lilly 15.2%, J&J 10.6%, AbbVie 7.6%
Financials	XLF	80	0.08%	Berkshire 12.3%, JPMorgan 11.7%, Visa 8.0%
Real estate (REITs)	VNQ	151	0.13%	Welltower, Prologis

Compare the fees in those two tables. Themed ETFs usually charge 0.35% to 0.75% a year. VOO charges 0.03%. So for every USD10,000, VOO takes USD3 a year, while a themed ETF can take up to USD75. The gap looks small in one year, but it adds up when you hold for 10 or 20 years.

Gold ETFs versus gold mining stocks

The theme list above includes Gold. When you open it, don’t be surprised to find two very different kinds of product in a “gold” search.

• A gold ETF holds physical gold bars in a vault, and its price follows the gold price. For example GLD, whose gold is held by custodian banks JPMorgan and HSBC, with a 0.40% yearly fee. On Bursa there’s 0828EA TradePlus Shariah Gold Tracker, which keeps at least 95% of the fund in physical gold and has a Shariah adviser.
• A gold mining stock is a company that digs for gold. Its price is affected by the gold price, but also by the company’s operating costs, management and debt. So it can rise or fall far more than gold, and sometimes move the other way.

A code containing GOLD isn’t necessarily a gold ETF. For example, the miner Barrick used to trade as “GOLD” in New York, but since 9 May 2025 Barrick trades under the code B. So don’t pick by code. Read the full name, and check whether the page has a Fund tab (a fund) or a Company tab (a company).

On Shariah status, Daus found no official Shariah certificate for GLD, GLDM or IAU, while 0828EA does have a Shariah adviser. The full steps and a comparison of every gold route are in how to buy gold in Moomoo.

A cautionary tale: when a theme gets too popular

These two ETFs were what everyone was talking about in 2020 and early 2021.

ARKK is an “innovation” ETF whose stocks are hand-picked by its manager. Its price climbed to around USD155 in February 2021. Then it fell to around USD30 by the end of 2022, losing roughly 80%. Today, five years later, it trades around USD91. That’s still about 40% below its peak.

ICLN is a clean energy ETF. It reached USD34.25 in January 2021, when everyone was talking about electric vehicles and solar power. Its price now is around USD17. Half its peak.

And if you put ARKK, ICLN and KWEB (a China internet ETF, which we’ll get to in Part 3) into Compare, you can see what “a theme that got too popular” looks like on one screen. The 10-year chart shoots up to a 2021 peak, then falls. Over the last 5 years, all three are still down, while VOO rose 86% over the same period.

⤢ab

1. a2021 peak
2. bDown over 5 years

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The stories behind both themes weren’t wrong. Innovation does happen, and the world really is shifting to clean energy. The problem is that many people bought in once the story was already front-page news. By the time everyone is talking about a theme, the price has usually risen a long way already. A true story isn’t necessarily a profitable investment, because the price you pay matters too.

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Part 3 — Country ETFs

Country ETFs hold companies from one country or one region. When you buy a country ETF, you’re depending on three things at once: that country’s economy, its government’s decisions, and the value of its currency against the dollar.

Country	Example ETF	Companies	Fee	Top three holdings
China (broad)	MCHI	586	0.59%	Tencent 14.0%, Alibaba 9.5%, CCB 4.2%
China (50 large caps)	FXI	60	0.74%	Tencent 9.3%, Alibaba 9.2%, CCB 8.9%
China (internet)	KWEB	46	0.69%	Tencent 10.4%, Alibaba 8.8%, PDD 8.1%
India	INDA	174	0.61%	HDFC Bank 6.6%, ICICI Bank 5.5%, Reliance 5.5%
India (weighted by earnings)	EPI	~580	0.84%	—
Japan	EWJ	173	0.49%	MUFG 4.7%, Toyota 3.4%, SMFG 3.0%
Taiwan	EWT	81	0.59%	TSMC 21.7%, MediaTek 7.7%
South Korea	EWY	83	0.59%	Samsung 23.5%, SK hynix 22.7%
Vietnam	VNM	60	0.66%	Vinhomes 7.9%, Vingroup 7.7%, Masan 6.1%
Emerging markets	EEM	1,216	0.72%	TSMC 15.3%, Samsung 7.9%
Emerging markets	VWO	5,061	0.06%	TSMC 14.7%
Malaysia	EWM	27	0.50%	Public Bank 15.4%, CIMB 13.6%, Maybank 10.9%

Every row in that table has its own story. Here are the five that teach the most.

China: the KWEB story

KWEB holds Chinese internet companies like Tencent, Alibaba and PDD. In February 2021, it traded around USD105. Then the Chinese government began tightening rules on tech companies. By October 2022, KWEB was down to around USD17. A fall of 84%.

Today it trades around USD25. That’s still about 77% below its 2021 peak.

Those companies didn’t go bankrupt. Tencent and Alibaba are still highly profitable. What changed was the government’s decisions, and that’s a risk that doesn’t show up in any financial report.

There’s another layer of risk many people don’t know about. Many Chinese companies listed in the US use a structure called a VIE. When you buy Alibaba shares in New York, you actually hold shares in a shell company in the Cayman Islands. That shell company has contracts with the operating company in China, but doesn’t directly own it. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) itself has issued a warning to investors about this structure.

India: two ways to pick companies

India is one of the fastest-growing economies, and many people ask how to invest there. The two common India ETFs are INDA and EPI, and they pick companies differently.

• INDA weights companies by size (market capMarket capA company's total value in the market.See it in the glossary →). The biggest companies get the biggest share, however much profit they make.
• EPI weights companies by profit. Only profitable companies qualify, and companies with bigger profits get a bigger share.

EPI charges 0.84% a year, one of the most expensive on this list. So if you’re interested in India, also check how much you’re willing to pay for that way of picking companies.

Korea and Taiwan: a country, or two chip companies?

Look back at the table. In EWY, Samsung and SK hynix make up 46% of the fund. Almost half of the “Korea ETF” is really two memory chip companies. In EWT, TSMC alone is 22%.

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1. Two chip companies

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So if you already hold SMH, and then buy EWT and EWY to “diversify into Asia”, you’re actually buying the same chip companies again and again. The ETF names are different, but what’s inside overlaps.

EEM and VWO: same idea, 12 times the fee

EEM and VWO both hold companies from emerging markets like Taiwan, China, India and Korea. Their holdings aren’t identical, because VWO holds more small companies and mainland Chinese shares. But the basic idea is the same.

The difference is the fee. EEM charges 0.72% a year. VWO charges 0.06%. On USD10,000, that’s USD72 versus USD6, every single year.

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1. Yearly fee

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It’s the clearest example of why you should compare fees before buying, instead of going with the name you’ve heard most.

The twist: a Malaysia ETF listed in America

Yes, EWM is an ETF in New York that holds Malaysian companies. Public Bank, CIMB and Maybank alone make up 40% of the fund, and the 10 biggest companies hold 72%.

Open the Fund tab on EWM’s page, and Moomoo itself shows the Bursa code for each holding: 1295 PBBANK, 1023 CIMB, 1155 MAYBANK. These are all companies you can buy directly on Bursa.

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1. Buyable directly on Bursa

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But think about what happens if you, a Malaysian, buy EWM through Moomoo:

1. You convert ringgit to dollars to buy an ETF that holds Malaysian banks.
2. Those banks pay dividends to the ETF. The ETF then distributes them to you, and the US withholds 30% because it’s a distribution from a US fund.
3. When you sell, you convert the dollars back to ringgit.

If you buy Public Bank, CIMB or Maybank shares directly on Bursa, there’s no currency conversion. And dividends from Malaysian companies aren’t taxed for most retail investors. The 2% dividend tax only applies to individuals who receive more than RM100,000 in dividends a year. EWM was built for foreign investors who want exposure to Malaysia. For Malaysians, the shorter route is usually right here on Bursa.

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Part 4 — Shariah ETFs: more choices than SPUS

Many people think SPUS is the only Shariah ETF. In fact there’s a whole family of them, covering US stocks, non-US stocks, technology, real estate and sukuk.

ETF	What it holds	Companies	Fee	Biggest holdings
SPUS	S&P 500 companies that pass a Shariah screen	~214	0.45%	NVDA 14.3%, AAPL 12.3%, MSFT 9.7%
HLAL	Large and mid-size US companies, FTSE Shariah screen	~200	0.50%	NVDA 13.2%, AAPL 11.8%, MSFT 9.5%
SPWO	Shariah-compliant companies outside the US, half developed markets and half emerging markets	~400	0.55%	TSMC 20.8%, Samsung 4.2%, SK hynix 3.6%
UMMA	Shariah-compliant companies worldwide, outside the US	~99	0.65%	Samsung 7.8%, SK hynix 6.7%, TSMC 5.9%
SPTE	Global technology, Shariah-compliant	~108	0.55%	TSMC 11.8%, NVDA 11.8%, AAPL 11.4%
SPRE	Global REITs, Shariah-compliant	31	0.50%	Equinix 13.3%, Welltower 13.3%, Goodman 12.5%
SPSK	US-dollar sukuk (not stocks)	—	0.50%	Yield around 3.5% a year

Holdings counts and percentages change over time, so treat these numbers as a rough picture (sources: SP Funds, Wahed and stockanalysis.com websites, plus the Moomoo app, 6 October 2026).

The fastest way to see this family in the app: type SP Funds into Search. All five SP Funds Shariah ETFs come up at once.

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1. The SP Funds family

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A few things worth knowing:

• SPUS and HLAL are two different routes to the same place. Both hold large US companies that pass a Shariah screen, but they use screens from different index providers. HLAL is issued by Wahed. If you use the Wahed app, this US stocks in Wahed tutorial (in Malay) explains how to buy it there. A real side-by-side of the two is in the Compare tutorial.
• SPTE and SPRE are Shariah “side dishes”. SPTE is focused on technology, and its top three companies hold over a third of the fund. SPRE holds only 31 REITs.
• SPSK isn’t a stock ETF. It holds sukuk, which are Shariah-compliant debt instruments. Its price moves much more slowly than a stock ETF, and it’s usually used for the calmer part of a portfolio.
• For Shariah ETFs you can buy in ringgit, see Part 6 below.

Why doesn’t a Shariah ETF like SPTE show a Shariah logo in the app?

In Moomoo, stocks and ETFs marked as Shariah-compliant carry a green crescent-moon icon in the badge row next to the name. SPUS has that icon. SPTE doesn’t, even though SPTE itself is a Shariah ETF that follows AAOIFI guidelines.

Daus hasn’t found an official Moomoo explanation for this. What is clear is that the Shariah label in the app depends on the list or data provider the broker itself uses. So if an ETF has no label, check the issuer’s prospectus or website. No label doesn’t necessarily mean not compliant. How Moomoo marks Shariah stocks, and who screens US stocks, is covered in is it halal?.

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Part 5 — Dividend and income ETFs

Some ETFs are built specifically to pay regular dividendsDividendA portion of company profit paid out to shareholders.See it in the glossary →. They’re popular with people who want a “salary” from their investments.

ETF	How it works	Companies	Fee	Pays	Gross yield
SCHD	100 US companies that pay high, consistent dividends	~100	0.06%	Every 3 months	—
VYM	US companies with above-average dividend yields	602	0.04%	Every 3 months	~2.2%
JEPI	S&P 500 stocks + selling options to collect premiums	—	0.35%	Monthly	~8%
JEPQ	Nasdaq-100 stocks + selling options to collect premiums	—	0.35%	Monthly	High, changes every month (check Div Yield TTM in the app)

JEPI’s and JEPQ’s yields look very high. So it’s worth understanding where that money comes from.

JEPI and JEPQ hold stocks, then sell other people the right to buy those stocks at a set price. The payment for that right (called a premium) is what gets distributed to you every month. But there’s a cost. When the market rises strongly, these ETFs can’t rise with it fully, because that upside has already been “sold” to someone else. You’re trading part of your future gains for cash today.

The payout isn’t fixed either. In JEPI’s Fund → Dividends tab, you can see JEPI paid USD6.36 per unit in 2022, but only USD4.72 in 2025. Today’s 8% yield isn’t a promise for next year.

There’s one more thing that matters for Malaysians. Every dividend from a US ETF is cut by 30% before it reaches your account, because Malaysia has no tax treaty with the US. So an 8% yield becomes about 5.6% in your hands. A 2.2% yield becomes about 1.5%.

For someone who needs cash flow now, income ETFs might make sense. But for someone who still wants to grow their money over the long run, a 30% cut on every distribution is a big cost. The full explanation of the dividend cut is in after your first buy.

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Part 6 — ETFs on Bursa Malaysia

Many people don’t realise Bursa has ETFs too. According to Bursa Malaysia’s official list (March 2026), there are 13 ETFs (14 counters, since one ETF has a ringgit and a dollar version), and 7 of them are Shariah-compliant. You can buy Bursa ETFs in Moomoo the same way you buy ordinary Bursa stocks.

One note on codes. Ordinary Bursa shares have a 4-digit code, such as 1155 MAYBANK. Bursa ETFs have 4 digits + EA (for example 0828EA), or EB for a dollar version. These are not warrants. Warrants have other codes, such as 11552H, and their names carry a “C” plus the issuer (MAYBANKC2H). So always read the full name.

In the app, the full list is under Markets → MY → ETFs. Or type EQ8 into Search to see the Eq8 family of Shariah ETFs at once.

Notice one thing in that list. On the day the screenshot was taken, most Bursa ETFs showed +0.00%, meaning nobody traded them at all that day.

Code	Name	What it holds	Shariah
0821EA	Eq8 Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25	The 25 largest Shariah-compliant companies on Bursa	Yes
0824EA	Eq8 MSCI Malaysia Islamic Dividend	Shariah-compliant Bursa companies with high dividends	Yes
0839EA	Eq8 FTSE Malaysia Enhanced Dividend Waqf	High-dividend Bursa companies, with part of the payout going to waqf	Yes
0820EA	FTSE4Good Bursa Malaysia ETF (formerly FBM KLCI ETF)	Large Bursa companies	No
0825EA	Eq8 MSCI SEA Islamic Dividend	Shariah-compliant dividend companies in Southeast Asia	Yes
0827EA	Eq8 Dow Jones U.S. Titans 50	The 50 largest Shariah-compliant US companies, in ringgit	Yes
0823EA	Principal FTSE China 50	The 50 largest Chinese companies in Hong Kong	No
0829EA / 0829EB	TradePlus S&P New China Tracker	Chinese consumer and services companies (EA in ringgit, EB in dollars)	No
0838EA	VP-DJ Shariah China A-Shares 100	100 Shariah-compliant mainland Chinese shares	Yes
0828EA	TradePlus Shariah Gold Tracker	Physical gold	Yes
0800EA	ABF Malaysia Bond Index Fund	Malaysian government bonds	No
0834EA	Kenanga KLCI Daily 2x Leveraged	Twice the KLCI’s daily move	No
0835EA	Kenanga KLCI Daily (-1x) Inverse	The opposite of the KLCI’s daily move	No

Advantages of Bursa ETFs for Malaysians:

• You buy in ringgit. No need to convert to dollars, so there’s no conversion cost and no currency risk when you buy and sell.
• Distributions aren’t cut by 30% in your hands, because these are Malaysian funds. But for ETFs that hold US stocks, like 0827EA, dividends from US companies are still cut at the fund level before they reach the ETF. So this advantage is biggest for ETFs that hold Malaysian stocks.
• No stamp duty. According to Moomoo Malaysia’s help page, buying and selling Bursa ETFs is exempt from stamp duty until 31 December 2028.
• 0827EA gives you exposure to large US companies in ringgit, and 0828EA gives you exposure to gold without storing physical gold. Both are Shariah-compliant.

Drawbacks to know about:

• Trading is mostly very thin. 0828EA (gold) is one of the most active, with 184,400 units changing hands on 28 September 2026. But 0827EA had no trades at all that day, and its last trade was on 25 September. 0827EA’s order book had just one buyer, at RM3.950 for 300 units, and no sellers at all, even though its last price was RM4.050. When very few people trade, the bid-ask spreadBid / Ask (and spread)Bid = the price a buyer will pay. Ask = the price a seller wants. The gap between them is the spread.See it in the glossary → gets wide. You might pay more when you buy and receive less when you sell. Use a limit order, not a market order.

• A fixed fee on every order. In Moomoo, every Bursa order pays an RM3 platform fee, 0.03% commission (covered by the new-user 0-commission voucher), a 0.03% clearing fee and 8% SST on those fees. ETFs are exempt from stamp duty. So one lot of 0828EA worth about RM520 costs about RM3.40 in fees, around 0.65%. The smaller the order, the bigger the percentage.
• You buy in lots of 100 units, just like Bursa stocks. If one unit of 0828EA is about RM5.20, one lot is about RM520. Odd-lot purchases (under 100 units) are possible too, but take longer to match. The buy your first stock tutorial explains how to buy odd lots.
• Fewer choices. There’s no semiconductor ETF or India ETF on Bursa. For those themes, you have to go to the US market.

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Part 7 — Leveraged and inverse ETFs: don’t treat them as savings

Some ETFs have names that sound like a shortcut to getting rich. TQQQ triples the Nasdaq-100’s daily move. SOXL triples the daily move of a semiconductor index. SQQQ moves three times in the opposite direction of the Nasdaq-100. Bursa has its own versions too, 0834EA and 0835EA.

These ETFs often hide next to ordinary ETFs with almost identical codes. Search SOX in Moomoo, and you’ll find SOXL (3x up) and SOXS (3x inverse) above the ordinary SOXX. Search SMH, and SMHU (3x) and SMHD (−3x) show up in the same list.

The key word in all these ETFs is daily. The issuers themselves state in their prospectuses that the goal is for one day only. Over periods longer than a day, the result can be very different from “three times”.

Look at this simple calculation. Say the index rises 10% today and falls 10% tomorrow.

	Day 1	Day 2	End result
Index	100 → 110 (+10%)	110 → 99 (−10%)	Down 1%
3x ETF	100 → 130 (+30%)	130 → 91 (−30%)	Down 9%

The index lost 1%. The 3x ETF didn’t lose 3%. It lost 9%. When the market swings up and down repeatedly, these losses pile up even if the index ends up back where it started.

And here’s what happened in 2022:

	Fall from peak to bottom
QQQ (plain Nasdaq-100)	around −33%
TQQQ (3x Nasdaq-100)	−81.7%
SOXL (3x semiconductors)	−90.5%

If you’d put RM10,000 into SOXL at the peak, you’d have been left with less than RM1,000. To get back to RM10,000, it would need to rise more than tenfold.

Now look at the long-run result. Put SMH, SOXL, TQQQ and QQQ into Compare and look at the 5Y Cumulative row. Over 5 years, SMH rose 359%, but SOXL, the “3 times” version, rose only 226%. The ETF that promised triple ended up with less than the ordinary one, because the 2022 crash ate a big part of its gains. TQQQ is only slightly ahead of QQQ (136% versus 105%), despite taking far more risk.

To be fair, over 10 years SOXL rose far more: +5,432% in the 10Y Cumulative row of the first screenshot below (taken 25 September 2026). Leveraged ETFs can win big when the market rises for a long time without a deep fall. The problem is that nobody knows when the next crash will come, and when it does, leveraged ETFs fall much further.

The third screenshot is interesting too. SOXL’s biggest holdings aren’t chip stocks, but money market funds and swap contracts. Leveraged ETFs reach “3 times” through financial contracts with banks, not by buying three times as many shares.

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Part 8 — How to research a themed ETF in Moomoo before buying

Before buying any ETF on this page, do these five checks in Moomoo.

1. Search for the ETF’s code and read its full name. Tap Search, type the code, and read the full name of every result. Codes that look alike are often different products. For example, SOXX is an ordinary semiconductor ETF, but SOXL is the 3x leveraged version.

2. Put it next to the ETFs you already hold, using Compare. Open the ETF’s page, tap the ⋯ icon at the right end of the bottom bar, choose Compare, and add the ETFs you already have. Look at the Top 10 Holdings section. If the same names appear at the top of every ETF, you’re not adding diversification. The full steps are in the Compare tutorial.

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1. Same companies

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3. Compare fees. On the same Compare screen, look at the Expense Ratio row. Remember the EEM and VWO example: same idea, 12 times the fee.

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4. Look at the longest chart available, including 2022. Switch the chart to 5 years. 2022 is a good test because almost every theme fell hard that year. Ask yourself: if this ETF halved after I bought it, would I panic-sell or keep holding?

5. Check the fund size. Very small ETFs are more likely to be closed by their issuer. If an ETF closes, you don’t lose everything. You receive cash at that day’s value. But your investment stops, possibly at a time you didn’t choose.

Want to buy one of them?

If after your research you want to buy a US ETF from this page, there are three things people often miss. First, many ETFs cost hundreds of dollars per unit. SMH, for example, is about USD606 per unit, roughly RM2,500. So with RM1,000 you’d need to buy part of a unit (fractional), and fractional buying has its own rules:

Second, every order has a fee, and the fee differs for orders below 1 share and 1 share and above:

Third, the step-by-step from finding the ETF to tapping Buy is in buy your first US ETF. For Bursa ETFs, follow buy your first stock, since it works the same as buying a Bursa share.

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Part 9 — Two tax issues many people miss

This isn’t tax advice. But you should know these two things before your US holdings get large.

1. Dividends are cut by 30%. Covered above. It applies to every US ETF, including Shariah ETFs and country ETFs.

2. US estate tax. This is the one people rarely mention. When a holder who isn’t a US citizen or resident dies, US assets above USD60,000 can be subject to US estate tax, at rates of up to 40%. Shares and ETFs listed in the US count as US assets. And Malaysia has no estate tax treaty with the US.

USD60,000 is roughly RM250,000 at today’s rate. For most people just starting out, that’s still a long way off. But if you add to US ETFs every month for 15 or 20 years, you might get there. As your holdings grow, talk to a tax adviser or estate planner who understands this.

ETFs listed on Bursa aren’t affected by this tax, because they aren’t US assets.

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Common mistakes

• Buying by name without opening up what’s inside. An “AI ETF” whose biggest holding is Microsoft, or a “Korea ETF” that’s half two chip companies. The name is marketing. The holdings are what you’re buying.
• Collecting lots of ETFs that all hold the same companies. VOO, QQQ, SMH, AIQ and EWT: five different names, but NVIDIA or TSMC sits near the top of almost every one.
• Buying into a theme once it’s in the headlines. ARKK, ICLN and KWEB all fell by more than half after becoming the talk of the town.
• Not comparing fees. 0.72% or 0.06% for almost the same idea.
• Holding leveraged ETFs like ordinary ETFs.
• Using market orders on thinly traded Bursa ETFs.

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Summary

• Broad ETFs are the rice. Themed, sector and country ETFs are the side dishes. Side dishes make the plate tastier, but few people eat only side dishes.
• Themed ETFs are more concentrated, charge higher fees, and can fall by more than half when the story changes or the price has run too far.
• Country ETFs depend on one country’s economy, government and currency. Some are really two or three companies rather than a whole country.
• Shariah choices go well beyond SPUS, including technology, REITs, sukuk and Bursa ETFs in ringgit.
• Dividends from US ETFs are cut by 30% for Malaysians. Leveraged ETFs aren’t for holding long term.
• Before buying, use Compare to check the holdings, the fees, and the overlap with what you already own.

Every ETF on this page is an example to research, not a recommendation to buy. Decide for yourself. This isn’t financial advice.