JEPI max drawdown: 13.0%
JPMorgan Equity Premium Income ETF. From its 2021-12-31 peak, JEPI fell 13.0% to the 2022-09-30 trough and needed 16 months to make a new high (2023-04-30). Computed from 75 months of history starting 2020-05-31, including extended pre-ETF data where available.
Covered-call income fund. The option overlay cushions but does not remove equity drawdowns.
JEPI drawdown statistics
2021-12-31 peak to 2022-09-30 trough.
New high reached 2023-04-30.
Share of all months spent below a prior high.
Rolling year ending 2022-09-30.
For context, SPY (the S&P 500 baseline) had a maximum drawdown of 23.9% over the same kind of monthly-close analysis.
The biggest JEPI drawdowns on record
| Depth | Peak | Trough | Recovered | Peak to trough | Total underwater |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| -13.0% | 2021-12-31 | 2022-09-30 | 2023-04-30 | 9 mo | 16 months |
| -5.7% | 2024-11-30 | 2025-04-30 | 2025-08-31 | 5 mo | 9 months |
| -4.8% | 2026-02-28 | 2026-03-31 | not yet | 1 mo | 5 months |
| -4.2% | 2021-08-31 | 2021-09-30 | 2021-10-31 | 1 mo | 2 months |
| -4.1% | 2023-08-31 | 2023-10-31 | 2023-11-30 | 2 mo | 3 months |
Methodology: monthly closing prices, peak-to-trough on total return where available. History extends before the ETF's launch via documented proxy chains (index funds, indices, and academic series), the same data that powers BestFolio's strategy backtests. Educational information, not investment advice.
Drawdowns are the reason tactical strategies exist
Buy-and-hold JEPI means living through every number on this page. BestFolio tracks published TAA strategies whose whole job is cutting these drawdowns, with out-of-sample track records.