Why can't you hold leveraged ETFs (2/3x long/short) for the long term?

Nothing to say, just post the picture$Defiance Daily Target 2X Long ORCL ETF(ORCX.US) I've done it twice and didn't make much money. When I reviewed it later, wow, it dropped about 69% after I sold. Such a drop is almost impossible to recover from.

If you hold the underlying stock, you can keep buying endlessly to try to lower your cost and recover to break even. But with leveraged ETFs, forget about it. Note, this is even Oracle, a hot AI giant stock$Oracle(ORCL.US). Other small-cap ETFs would only be worse when they drop.

Leveraged ETFs only have excess returns in one-way markets. But considering the leverage decay, once you get the timing wrong, it's extremely hard to recover. Even if you're very confident, it's best to hold for just a day or trade intraday—that's the only feasible method.