Over the year to Oct 16, 2026, ETFIQ measured 67 alternatives ETFs against the S&P 500's weekly moves. The index fell in 22 of the 52 weeks, losing an average of 1.22% in those weeks. Across the group, 24 of the 67 funds rose, on average, in those same weeks, and the median fund's down-week capture was 22%, meaning it lost about a fifth as much as the index typically did when the index fell. Behaving differently from stocks is the thing these funds are sold on, and that number is one way of checking whether they did.
The eight strategies behaved in very different ways, so looking at the whole group together can mislead. Hedged equity, the largest group with 21 funds, had a median correlation of +0.90 with the S&P 500 and a median down-week capture of 57.5%, so most of these funds still fell alongside the index, just by less. Managed futures, with 17 funds, had a much lower median correlation of +0.31 and a median down-week capture of 3.7%, with 8 of the 17 funds rising on average in down weeks. Volatility funds, as a group, had a negative median correlation of −0.63 and a median down-week capture of −61.9%, meaning the typical fund in this group rose when the index fell, and by a wide margin. Long-short equity and multi-strategy funds sat in between, with positive correlations and down-week captures of 35.0% and 23.6%. The smaller groups, event driven, market neutral and global macro, each had only one to three funds, so their medians reflect very few funds.
At the fund level, the ETFs with the largest average gains in down weeks were volatility funds. UVXY, ProShares Ultra VIX Short-Term Futures ETF, averaged +4.59% in weeks the S&P 500 fell, with a down-week capture of −377.4%, and VXX and VIXY also posted average gains above 3% with similarly negative captures. At the other end, hedged equity funds with high correlations, such as XTR, Global X S&P 500 Tail Risk ETF, at +0.99 correlation, and QTR, Global X NASDAQ 100 Tail Risk ETF, at +0.90, had down-week captures above 100%, meaning they lost more than the index did in its average down week.
Falling less, or rising, in down weeks is not the same as producing a return ahead of cash. Of the 67 funds, 50 finished ahead of T-bills over the same 52 weeks. Among the 24 funds that rose on average when the index fell, only 13 also beat T-bills. UVXY, for example, averaged +4.59% in down weeks but finished 73.1 percentage points behind T-bills over the full year, while CTA, Simplify Managed Futures Strategy ETF, rose an average of 0.97% in down weeks and finished 7.9 points ahead of T-bills. The two measures answer different questions: one is about behavior during stock market declines, the other about the return earned over the whole period.
Readers can look up any individual fund's correlation, down-week capture and performance against T-bills on ETFIQ's fund pages.