Gamblers Are Sinking Billions Into a Leveraged Market Fringe

The buy-everything mania that greeted Donald Trump’s election is cooling in the tried-and-tested world of stocks and corporate credit. Yet on Wall Street’s speculative fringes, the risk-taking frenzy is only getting bigger by the day.

Heavy trading — and big price moves — in everything from crypto to leveraged exchange-traded funds was the story in a week where swings in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 finally started to abate.

Ground zero for the casino crowd: The $140 billion complex of amped-up exchange-traded funds tracking the likes of Big Tech stocks, Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy Inc., and ...