The basket method: fill 240 slots, then open one a month

Long-term buy-and-hold takes years to show a result. Watching the account every day in the meantime gets tedious, and your eyes drift to other assets. Many individual investors know that feeling. The basket method is a second rule to run alongside, shared in a community. This article is the operator's own rewrite of its structure and risks (source: Laoer, 3x.fire).

Rules

• At the start, buy 240 shares of the ETF at once and put one share in each of 240 virtual slots. The real account is just one account.
• Every month, with a fixed amount, fill the slots in order from slot 1 until each slot's value reaches the target amount ($500 in the original).
• Nothing is sold before the basket is complete. If a crash pushes slots below the target, the next month's deposit simply refills the lowest-numbered slot that is short.
• When all 240 slots are at or above the target, the basket is complete. No more money goes in after that.
• From the month after completion, open one slot a month, starting at slot 1. If it is above the target, sell the excess. If it is below, refill it with cash from earlier sales.

Why 240

It is 12 months × 20 years. The name suggests 20 years, but the slots fill much faster. Once the first share grows through price gains and stock splits, the untouched higher-numbered slots cross the target on their own. TQQQ, the example in the original, split four times after 2018 (3:1, 2:1, 2:1, 2:1), and one share from 2018 had become 24 shares by 2026.

Characteristics

No person decides the rebalancing. Trimming only the excess on the way up and refilling with saved cash on the way down are both set by one target amount. You only look at one slot a month, so the rule is easy to keep. This is also why it falls less than plain buy-and-hold in a downturn: some cash was already trimmed off on the way up.

The original author's follow-up notes

The main points of notes the original author added later (Sep 2026).

• There is one account. TQQQ is bought in that account every month, and accounts are not split per slot.
• A basket is not a real product. It is a virtual idea for rebalancing fixed amounts in and out while you accumulate. You keep records yourself in a spreadsheet or on the calculation page the author shared.
• The virtual slots exist so that the gains and losses of the whole account do not rattle you. You only need to watch 240 small slots grow. In a crash you fill them one at a time. In a rally you sell the full slots one at a time, starting from the front.
• You do not agonize over when or how much to sell. Once a month, on a day you choose, you either buy or realize. The goal is a 20-year monthly paycheck system.
• The ticker itself is not the point. The point is to keep your money management and your system intact while buying leverage.

Premise: long-term gains and the split history

The method assumes two things: that the underlying index rises over the long run, and that stock splits fill the slots faster. Since its listing in February 2010, TQQQ has split eight times and has never reverse-split (as of Sep 2026). The splits were 2:1 in February 2011, 2:1 in May 2012, 2:1 in January 2014, 2:1 in January 2017, 3:1 in May 2018, 2:1 in January 2021, 2:1 in January 2022 and 2:1 in November 2025. On a split, every slot's share count rises by the same ratio and past records stay as they are. The rule is defined in real single shares, so this site's backtest keeps the eight splits in code and converts the data provider's adjusted prices back to pre-split prices. With adjusted prices as they are, one past share would look far smaller than it really was and the slots would never fill.

The original author's step-by-step example (start Jan 2018, ₩1,100 per dollar)

The main points of eight scenes from the calculation page the author shared. The numbers are the author's calculations, not values this site reproduced.

1. The first purchase (2018-01-02, $139.47)
   Buy 240 shares at once for $33,472 (about ₩36.82M) and put one share in each of slots 1 to 240. The same day, the first ₩1M deposit ($909) buys 6 more shares, taking slot 1 from 1 share to 4 shares ($558 ✅) and slot 2 from 1 share to 4 shares. The remaining $72 carries over to next month. 2 slots are full.
2. The next month (2018-02-01, $165.17)
   The money available is the $909 deposit plus the $72 carried over. Buy 5 shares: slot 3 fills at 4 shares ($661 ✅), and slot 4 reaches 3 shares ($495), $5 short, so it continues next month. 3 slots are full.
3. 3:1 split (2018-05-24)
   The previous close of $158.97 becomes $52.99. Slots 1 to 10 go from 4 shares to 12 ($636), slot 11, which was being filled, goes from 2 to 6, and the untouched slots 12 to 240 go from 1 share to 3 ($159). No new money went in, and the share count tripled. Once the price passes $167, 3 shares × $167 = $500 and those slots fill on their own.
4. The crash (2018-12-31, $35.47)
   The 12 shares in slots 1 to 10 are worth $425, below $500. 0 slots are full. ₩48.82M has gone in, and the account is worth ₩32.77M. Sitting through this stretch is the whole point.
5. After a crash, fill from the front (2019-01-02, $35.98)
   New shares go not to the back but to the lowest-numbered slot below $500. The $858 deposit plus $18 carried over buys 24 shares: slots 1 to 10 each get 2 more, to 14 shares ($504 ✅), and slot 11 gets 4 more, to 14 shares. Making the front slots thicker at low prices is what makes the amounts realized from them larger later.
6. Two and a half years in (2020-06-30, $93.57)
   Going back to the front after every crash, progress has only reached slot 59. Slots 1 to 11 hold 14 shares ($1,310), slots 55 to 58 hold 7 shares ($655), slot 59 is being filled at 5 shares ($468), and slots 60 to 240 hold 3 shares ($281), still short. ₩66.82M has gone in, and the account is worth ₩131M.
7. Complete (2020-09-02, $167.24)
   The untouched slots 72 to 240 reach 3 shares × $167.24 = $501.72 ✅, and 169 slots fill at once. That is 1,210 shares in total, worth $202,356 (about ₩240M). It took 33 months and about ₩69.8M. Only 71 slots were filled by hand. Splits and price gains filled the rest.
8. Realizing gains (2021-02-01, $93.06)
   After completion, the January 2021 2:1 split doubled the share count of every slot. With all 240 slots at or above $500, it is slot 1's turn. Slot 1 holds 28 shares × $93.06 = $2,606. Keep $500, sell 22 shares and realize $2,047 (about ₩2.34M). The 6 shares left are worth $558 ✅. Next month is slot 2, then slot 3, and after slot 240 it goes back to slot 1.

How the money flows (example)

An example with TQQQ fixed at $100 a share and the exchange rate fixed at ₩1,400 per dollar. The first investment is 1 share × 240 slots, so ₩140,000 × 240 = ₩33.6M is needed at once. After that, about ₩1M goes in each month to fill slots. Paying in for all 240 months would add ₩240M, so the theoretical maximum investment is ₩273.6M. In the original author's calculation, though, the basket was complete at the point when about ₩80M had gone in (month 33). After that no more money went in, and the regular rebalancing produced cash (calculated before tax).

Test period

This is a long-term method, so a backtest should cover at least 10 years, and 20 if possible. TQQQ data starts in February 2010, so the longest window you can actually test is a little over 16 years. When you pick the basket in this site's backtest, the period is set to at least 10 years and the actual window is shown with the results. The backtest follows the same rule: no selling before completion and no new money after it. So the total money put in after completion is lower than for the other methods compared alongside it. The actual results are in the basket method backtest results.

The original author's calculation (assuming a start in January 2018)

The figures below are the calculation from the original post, and this site has not reproduced them. Tax is not included.

• The starting 240 shares cost about ₩36.82M (at ₩1,100 per dollar). Add 33 monthly deposits totaling ₩33M, and about ₩69.8M went in.
• Completion came in month 33 (September 2, 2020). 71 slots were filled by hand, and the other 169 filled at once through the split and price gains (per the author's calculation page).
• In the first two years after completion (October 2020 to September 2022), 24 realizations added up to about $33,000. That was about $1,700 a month in the 16 rising months and about $783 a month in the 8 falling months of 2022. The smallest month was $234.
• Realized by year: $21,806 in 2021, $9,496 in 2022, $10,066 in 2023, $21,765 in 2024, $21,071 in 2025 and $30,385 in 2026 (through August).
• As of August 2026, the slots were worth $423,025 and the realized cash was $117,767, about $540,792 in total. The same money simply held in TQQQ would be $680,848. In QQQ it would be $271,742.
• The drawdown at the 2022 low was -75%, a little less than the -82% of plain buy-and-hold.

Related concepts and search terms

The method goes by a community name, but its parts are known ideas. Here are the names to use when you look further, and where this article's rule fits among them.

• Value averaging: laid out by Michael Edleson in a 1993 book. You set a target for what the holding should be worth each month. If it falls short, you add more. If it goes over, you add less or sell. The basket method's per-slot target amount is value averaging cut into slots, and it is the closest concept (Wikipedia).
• Dollar cost averaging: buy the same amount at regular intervals. The fixed monthly amount in the filling stage is this (Bogleheads).
• Value rebalancing (VR): a community method (Laoer) that adapts value averaging to TQQQ with bands. The original author runs it as the main strategy and keeps the basket method beside it. Search terms: 밸류 리밸런싱, 무한매수법.
• Bucket strategy: a retirement withdrawal method that splits savings into buckets by time horizon and draws from them in order. Opening one slot a month after completion resembles this withdrawal stage.
• Rebalancing bands: a rule that restores the target once a weight drifts past a set width. This method does the same job with one per-slot target amount instead of a band.

Search terms: value averaging, dollar cost averaging, bucket strategy withdrawal, rebalancing bands, 밸류 리밸런싱, 무한매수법.

Drawbacks and risks

• You need a lump sum at the start to buy 240 shares. In the original calculation, that was half of all the money put in.
• The rule does not stop a -75% drawdown. You go through the full volatility of a 3× leveraged ETF. Whether you can keep the rule through that stretch is the whole method.
• In a strong bull market it earns less than plain buy-and-hold, because the cash trimmed off does not take part in the rise.
• Every realization triggers capital gains tax. The original calculation leaves it out.
• Splits are what fill the slots fast, and splits are decided by the fund company, not created by the rule. With no split, or with a reverse split, the premise that the slots fill fast goes away.