Over the year to October 13, 2026, the S&P 500 fell in 24 of its 52 weeks, averaging a 1.09% decline in those weeks. ETFIQ tracked 67 alternatives ETFs through the same stretch to see what they did while stocks were down. Seventeen of the 67 rose, on average, during those down weeks. Across all 67, the median fund's down-week capture was 39%, meaning the typical fund still moved with the market but a good deal less than the index did.
The strategy groupings show why a single number for "alternatives" does not tell the full story. Hedged equity funds, the largest group at 21, carried a median correlation of +0.89 with the S&P 500 and a median down-week capture of 56.5%, so most still fell alongside stocks, just by less. Managed futures funds, 17 in number, had a lower median correlation of +0.46 and a median capture of 38.9%. Volatility funds stood apart: a median correlation of −0.63 and a median down-week capture of −52.1%, meaning this group as a whole rose, on average, in the very weeks the index fell. Market neutral funds, though only two in the sample, showed an even more negative median capture of −97.0%. Long-short equity, multi-strategy, event driven and global macro funds sat in between, with smaller samples and capture numbers ranging from 1.7% to 88.6%.
At the fund level, the three ProShares and iPath volatility products, UVXY, VXX and VIXY, had the most negative down-week captures in the full table, each rising more than 2% on average in weeks SPY fell, with captures beyond −190%. BTAL, a market neutral fund, also rose in down weeks, averaging +1.75% with a capture of −160.0%. At the other end, funds such as QTR, RSST and CBLS had down-week captures above 100%, meaning they moved further than the index did in its down weeks, on average, over this period.
Holding up in a falling market is a separate question from building wealth over the full year. Of the 67 funds, 49 finished the 52 weeks ahead of BIL, the T-bill proxy. Among the 17 funds that rose on average in down weeks, only 8 also finished ahead of T-bills. UVXY, VXX, VIXY and BTAL, the four funds with the steepest negative down-week captures, all finished behind T-bills by between 21.7 and 76.6 percentage points. By strategy, managed futures funds combined a comparatively modest down-week capture with the highest share ahead of T-bills, 16 of 17, while hedged equity, despite closely tracking the index downward, still saw 15 of 21 funds finish ahead of T-bills.
Readers can look up any fund's correlation, down-week capture and performance against T-bills on its individual page on ETFIQ.