A drawdown will come. Decide now how you'll meet it.
A falling market is the only window where a defensive blend earns its keep — and the single worst moment to first read the fine print. This page is here on purpose before one arrives: what the model did in past stress, the upside it gives up to do it, and the trade-off you are accepting if you follow it. Every figure below is a backtest. There is no real-money record.
The falls it dug through, in history
These are backtested figures over 2005–2026, copied from the strategy page. They show the same pattern each time: when the index fell hard, the blend fell too — just less. Deeper bar is a deeper drawdown.
The deepest hole it dug
The single largest peak-to-trough fall anywhere in the 2005–2026 backtest — for the blend and for the index over the same window.
Read this honestly: every number on this page is a backtest. Backtested results are hypothetical, benefit from hindsight, and are not a promise of future performance. The blend has never managed real money through a real drawdown — the point of publishing these figures now is so the trade-off is understood before that day, not discovered during it.
The deal, plainly
There is no free lunch in this. A shallower drawdown is bought with something, and the something is upside. Understanding both halves is the whole job of this page.
What the model traded FOR
Far shallower falls. In every stress window we backtested, the blend stepped out of assets that broke their trend and parked in cash or short treasuries — so the hole it dug was materially smaller than the index's.
What the model traded AWAY
Some of the upside. The same rule that keeps the blend out of a crash also keeps it out of the first leg of a recovery, and it lags a straight-up bull tape. There is no version of this that wins on both ends.
The price of the smoother ride
The shallower drawdowns above are not a gift — they are paid for, continuously, in the years between crises. If you only take one thing from this page, take these three.
It will trail in bull markets
This is not a risk — it is the mechanism working. A blend built to sidestep crashes cannot also outrun a market that only goes up. On the live paper record it has trailed the S&P 500 every week so far, exactly as designed.
The gap can last years, not weeks
A calm, rising market can run for a long time. Across such a stretch the blend can sit behind the index the whole way — and the value it is storing up only shows on the days the index falls. Backtested, those days are where the entire case lives.
It still falls — just less
A shallower drawdown is still a drawdown. The backtested worst was -33.8%. Followers who expected zero red weeks were expecting a different product; the honest promise is a smaller hole, not no hole.
The plan you make in calm is the one that survives the fall.
We cannot and do not tell any individual what to do — the same public model is published for everyone, and nothing here is personalized advice. What we can do is show the pattern. The followers who came out the far side of a backtested drawdown intact were, without exception, the ones who had already understood the trade-off on this page before the market turned.
So the useful exercise is a simple one, done today: write down — for yourself — how you would react to a 20% fall, and to a year of trailing the index. The decision made while looking at these figures calmly is worth more than any decision made mid-drawdown.
- They treated a shallower drawdown as the product working, not breaking — a -22% backtested fall in 2008 was the design, not a bug.
- They expected to trail in a rising market and did not read the gap as failure — the live paper record has trailed every week so far.
- They judged the blend on a full cycle, not a quarter, because the entire case sits on the days the index falls.
- They knew the honest worst case in advance — -33.8% backtested — so no single red month was a surprise that forced a panic decision.
Described as historical behaviour and backtested figures only. Not a recommendation, not a prediction, and not advice for your situation.
Before you follow it, know both sides
The shallower drawdown and the trailing bull market are the same coin. See exactly how the model produces that shape, and watch it run week by week on a paper account.
Full disclosure:every figure here is a backtest (2008 approx -22% vs the S&P 500 approx -37%; 2022 approx -14% vs -18%; -33.8% backtested maximum drawdown). Backtested results are hypothetical, benefit from hindsight, and are not a promise of future performance. There is no real-money track record. Uptogain publishes one public model for everyone — it is not personalized advice, and we neither manage your money nor take custody of it.