How do I calculate a portfolio's maximum drawdown?
Maximum drawdown is the largest fall from a previous portfolio high to a later low. The analyzer combines your ETF weights, models monthly rebalancing and measures monthly-close losses and recovery. As an observed single-fund example, SPY fell 50.80% from 2007-10-31 to 2009-02-28 across 405 monthly observations through 2026-09-30. Daily losses can be deeper. The interactive portfolio analysis can also include modeled pre-inception extensions.
| Measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Maximum drawdown | -50.80% |
| Peak | 2007-10-31 |
| Trough | 2009-02-28 |
| Recovered | 2012-03-31 |
| Monthly observations | 405 |
Last verified
Is the result based on daily lows?
No. This tool uses monthly closing values. Intra-month losses and intraday lows can be deeper than the displayed maximum drawdown.
How is recovery measured?
Recovery is the first later observation that reaches the prior high. A drawdown that has not recovered has no known recovery time.
Can the tool use history before an ETF launched?
The portfolio analysis uses documented proxy and modeled extensions where available. The worked SPY example above uses the separately supplied observed fund-history statistics.
Drawdown Analyzer
How bad does your portfolio get before it recovers? See max drawdown, underwater curve, and the top historical crashes, with ETF history extended back to 1980.
Format: TICKER WEIGHT, separated by commas. Weights auto-normalize to 100%.
What this tool tells you
Drawdown Analyzer is an educational tool. Prices from institutional market data feeds, with pre-inception history extended via index and mutual fund proxies (how we do it). This is not investment advice. Past performance does not guarantee future results.