Same Benchmark, Different Leverage Targets: Robinhood Holder-Count Additions After Benchmark Gains and Declines

After a benchmark decline, is the Robinhood holder-count addition rate higher in a +3× fund than in its unlevered counterpart, relative to an equal gain? Platforms list these funds side by side; the answer bears on sales-practice regulation. A fixed-effects panel regression relates that rate to lagged benchmark gains and declines by leverage target, using the 2018–2020 Robintrack archive, session-aligned and screened for instrument breaks and outages. The prospectively specified test fails to establish the predicted asymmetry. On eight exact-benchmark ladders, the 2% contrast is 0.59 additions per 1000 prior holders; its interval admits meaningful asymmetry of either sign, so this is not evidence of symmetry. A prespecified secondary contrast on 16 segments is 5.5 per 1000 but does not test the hypothesis; exploratory checks trace it to four added +3× segments, and it falls to 2.5 without changes spanning the prior close. Because a +3× fund’s own return is about three times its benchmark’s, the design cannot separate leverage preference from a response to that return. The study documents how product selection and measurement shape these comparisons. For regulators, a class-level holder-count asymmetry alone is not evidence of retail leverage-seeking.