The easiest ways explain it is just that they are using options in order to leverage these ETFs or to create a short ETF. You could do this yourself, but it's easier and most of the times the folks running these are more experienced with balancing and will do a better job of achieving the goals than we would. Than said, if you're buying puts on QQQ but it doesn't go down, you lose money due to theta decay on those options as they expire or get a day closer to expiration. They can be great it you correctly identify the trend, but if goes the other way or even if there's chop you'll lose. So over a long time period you'll lose money on them, but can successfully use them for short time periods. Just be careful and down go all-in on this with anything you can't afford to lose.