As of October 7, 2026, 430 buffer ETFs from 8 issuers show a market split between funds that have run out of room to gain and those with upside still ahead. 128 funds, or 30% of the total, are at their cap, meaning the index they track has risen far enough that those funds have no further upside for the current period. Another 270 funds, 63% of the total, remain open, with room to move in either direction before either the cap or the buffer comes into play. A smaller group, 31 funds or 7%, has its buffer already absorbing losses, and one fund has a buffer that is exhausted.
Across all funds, the median fund could still gain 5.6% from its current price before hitting its cap, and could fall 4.3% before its buffer starts to cushion further losses. These numbers come from the issuers' own published terms and are stated in fund-price terms, not index terms.
The issuer table shows meaningful differences in how funds are positioned. Innovator, the largest issuer with 138 funds, has 44 at cap and 13 with buffers working, with a median remaining gain of 6.9% and a median fall of 5.0% before the buffer begins. First Trust, with 104 funds, has 41 at cap and 6 with buffers working; its median fund can still gain 5.2% and has 6.3% of room before the buffer starts, the widest downside cushion among issuers reporting both numbers. AllianzIM, PGIM, Calamos, Corgi, TrueShares and iShares round out the list, with PGIM notably having no funds currently in buffer-working status despite 17 of its 44 funds sitting at cap. Corgi, Calamos and TrueShares do not report a median remaining gain number in this summary. Median expense ratios across issuers range from 0.30% for Corgi to 0.80% for Innovator, First Trust and TrueShares.
The reset-month table illustrates how remaining cap shrinks as a fund's current period runs its course. Funds resetting in October 2026, the soonest in this twelve-month window, show a median remaining gain of just 0.7%, alongside a median index move since the period began of +14.0%, meaning the underlying index has already climbed close to or into the cap zone for many of these funds. By contrast, funds resetting later, such as those in August 2027 and September 2027, show median remaining gains of 13.3% and 14.3% respectively, with much smaller median index moves since their (more recent) period start, 1.3% and 1.9%. This pattern reflects the structure of these products: caps are set at the start of each period, and as time passes and the index moves, the gap between price and cap narrows for funds further along in their cycle, while freshly reset funds start with the full cap distance ahead of them.
Readers can check the live desk for any individual fund's current distance to cap and buffer, its reset date, and whether it currently sits in the open, at-cap, or buffer-working band.