The financial innovation machine has blessed us with another masterpiece. Meet the Tradr 2X Long PONY Daily ETF (ticker: PONX), a product that answers the question literally nobody asked: "What if we took a recently-IPO'd Chinese autonomous vehicle company and added 2x daily leverage?"
It's beautiful. It's terrifying. It's exactly the kind of thing that makes you wonder if we've learned anything since 2008, or if we're just getting better at packaging risk in increasingly entertaining ways.
PONX launched on September 8, 2025, and recently hit new exchange listings. The underlying asset is Pony AI Inc. (NASDAQ: PONY), a Chinese autonomous driving company that operates driverless robotaxis across Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. They IPO'd in November 2024, raising $260 million in one of the largest autonomous driving IPOs in U.S. market history.
The ETF seeks to deliver 200% of the daily performance of Pony AI's stock. So, if PONY goes up 5% today, PONX should go up 10%. If PONY drops 5%, PONX drops 10%. Daily reset, compounding effects, all the usual leverage disclaimers apply.
Expense ratio: 1.30%
Current 52-week range: $11.34 to $72.51
Translation: This thing moves like a caffeinated squirrel
Let's address the elephant, or rather, the pony, in the room. They called it PONX.
Not PNYX. Not PAII (for Pony AI). Not ROBO or AUTO or anything remotely serious sounding. PONX. It sounds like either:
And yet, here we are. You can now tell your financial advisor you want to go long PONX, and technically, that's a legitimate statement. The future is weird.
Setting aside the ticker comedy, Pony AI is a genuinely significant player in autonomous vehicles. Founded in 2016, they've racked up some impressive credentials:
The Good:
The Not-As-Good:
The prospectus contains this beautiful sentence: “Investors would lose all of their money if the Fund's underlying security moves more than 50% in a direction adverse to the Fund on a given trading day.”
Read that again. If Pony AI stock drops more than 50% in a single day, PONX goes to zero. Not “loses money.” Not “performs poorly.” Zero. Complete wipeout. Before the closing bell.
Given that PONY has already demonstrated the ability to drop from $15 to $4.18 (a 72% decline) in its short public life, this isn't theoretical. This is the financial equivalent of juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle across a tightrope suspended over a shark tank.
Additional features include:
The leveraged single-stock ETF category has exploded recently. GraniteShares' 2x Long NVDA ETF (NVDL) has $2.9 billion in assets after posting a 439% gain in 2024. Retail investors have demonstrated an insatiable appetite for leveraged bets on individual names, particularly in high-volatility sectors like tech.
After Trump's election victory in November, some leveraged single-stock ETFs surged 90% in four trading sessions. The message was clear: there's gold in them thar hills of maximum leverage.
Tradr (owned by AXS Investments) saw an opportunity. Autonomous vehicles are hot. Chinese tech has momentum. Pony AI just IPO'd with fanfare and institutional backing. The stock is volatile enough to make leveraged products interesting but legitimate enough to pass regulatory scrutiny.
So, they launched PONX, presumably after someone in marketing said, “the ticker symbol writes its own headlines” and everyone in the room nodded sagely.
Autonomous vehicles represent a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity. Pony AI is a legitimate player with real technology, actual customers, and meaningful partnerships. If robotaxis achieve widespread adoption over the next decade, early investors in leading platforms could see substantial returns.
The 2x leverage allows sophisticated traders to:
For investors who believe in the autonomous vehicle thesis but want more bang for their buck (and are willing to accept more bust for their mistakes), PONX provides a tool. Not a great tool. Not a safe tool. But a tool nonetheless.
PONX represents something larger than just another leveraged ETF. It's a signpost on the road of financial evolution, marking how far we've come in democratising access to sophisticated (read: dangerous) investment strategies.
Twenty years ago, if you wanted 2x leveraged exposure to a specific pre-profitable Chinese technology company, you'd need a prime brokerage account, options approval, and probably a compliance officer asking uncomfortable questions. Today, you can do it in your Robinhood account while waiting for your coffee.
Is this good? Bad? Both? Neither?
The optimist says we're witnessing the ultimate expression of market efficiency and investor choice. The pessimist says we're watching retail investors get access to financial weapons of mass destruction wrapped in cartoon pony packaging. The realist says it's probably both, and the only certainty is that somebody's going to lose a lot of money while somebody else makes a lot of money, and the ETF issuer collects 1.30% either way.
Let's be clear: this is not an investment. This is a speculation. A very specific, very risky speculation that only makes sense if:
1. You believe Pony AI will achieve significant milestones in the next few weeks/months (not years, remember, daily reset)
2. You're actively monitoring the position (this is not buy-and-hold)
3. You can afford to lose 100% of what you invest (seriously)
4. You understand leverage mechanics, volatility drag, and compounding effects (if you don't, Google them before proceeding)
5. You have specific catalysts in mind (earnings, regulatory approvals, partnership announcements)
Potential catalysts include:
But remember leveraged single-stock ETFs are designed for trading, not investing. The daily reset mechanism and volatility drag mean holding for extended periods virtually guarantees underperformance relative to 2x the underlying stock's return.
PONX is simultaneously:
If you're considering buying PONX, ask yourself: Do I have an edge in predicting Pony AI's short-term stock movements? Am I comfortable with the possibility of total loss? Do I understand how daily-reset leveraged products work?
If the answer to all three is “yes,” then PONX might be an appropriate tool for expressing your view.
If the answer to any of them is “no,” then PONX is basically a very expensive lottery ticket with worse odds and a funnier name.
The financial industry has given us many things over the years: portfolio diversification, passive index investing, target-date retirement funds. These are useful innovations that help people build wealth responsibly.
And then sometimes the industry gives us a 2x leveraged ETF on a Chinese robotaxi company called PONX, and we're reminded that markets contain multitudes.
Will PONX make some people rich? Probably.
Will it make more people poor? Almost certainly.
Is the ticker symbol going to generate thousands of terrible puns? Absolutely.
Should you bet your retirement on it? Dear God, no.
But does it perfectly capture the intersection of technological optimism, financial engineering, regulatory arbitrage, and human nature's eternal desire to get rich quick while simultaneously accepting absurd levels of risk?
You bet your PONX it does.