Side hustles make a bit of extra money. But there is one question I don't think people talk about enough: what do you actually do with that money? Spend it on stuff you don't need, or put it to work?
I invest most of my side hustle earnings into ETFs. For a while I have wanted to try something much more aggressive, so I started an experiment: every month I put €100 into an extremely aggressive leveraged portfolio on Trading 212, and I'm documenting what happens.
Enjoying this report?
One email per experiment. Full numbers, no fluff.
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. I'm just sharing what I do with my own money. These investments are extremely risky, and some of them are 3x and 5x leveraged.
What leverage actually means
A 3x leveraged ETF aims to move three times as much as its index in a single day. If the index goes up 1%, the 3x ETF goes up about 3%. If the index goes down 1%, it goes down about 3%.
That cuts both ways. If the market crashes 10%, a 3x ETF drops about 30%. I also hold a 5x product, which would drop about 50% on the same day. Leveraged ETFs also reset every day, so in a choppy market they can lose value even when the index ends up flat.
The five positions
- QQQ3: tracks the Nasdaq 100, leveraged 3x.
- MST3: MicroStrategy, leveraged 3x. MicroStrategy already behaves like a Bitcoin stock on steroids, and this adds more steroids on top.
- MAG7: the Magnificent 7 (Apple, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla), leveraged 5x. The craziest position in the portfolio.
- 3EUL: a collection of the largest European companies, leveraged 3x.
- 3EDF: European aerospace and defence, leveraged 3x.
The two European ETFs are there for a little diversification, if you can call anything in this portfolio diversified.
How the €100 is split every month
- 40% (€40) QQQ3
- 30% (€30) MST3
- 10% (€10) MAG7
- 10% (€10) 3EUL
- 10% (€10) 3EDF
Why I'm doing this
I have been investing for a few years in a normal, not-that-aggressive portfolio, and that stays separate. This is a small fixed amount that I treat as money I could lose completely. I have always wanted to see how an extremely risky strategy actually behaves over time, and buying the same amount every month means I'm not putting everything in at one price.
How the series will work
There won't be much to say every single month, so each monthly €100 investment gets a short video, and the full long video comes after 12 months with the whole year's progress.
The money going in comes from my side hustles, mostly 3D printing. Here is what that actually earns: How much my 3D printing side hustle actually makes. And if you have a blog you want to earn from, this is what I did when AdSense kept rejecting me: Rejected by AdSense again.
If you want to open a Trading 212 account, you can use my link and we both get a free share: Trading 212 invite (affiliate link).
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