Over the year to October 20, 2026, the S&P 500 fell in 25 of 52 weeks, losing 1.10% on average in those weeks. ETFIQ tracked 67 alternatives ETFs over that stretch to see how they behaved when stocks dropped. Seventeen of the 67 rose, on average, in those down weeks. Across all 67, the median fund's down-week capture was 40%, meaning the median fund moved about two-fifths as much as the index in the direction the index moved, on average, during its losing weeks.
The strategies behind these funds differ enough that a single average obscures more than it shows. The median hedged equity fund carried a correlation of +0.89 with the S&P 500, meaning it mostly moved with stocks, up or down, even if by a smaller amount; 4 of its 21 funds rose on average when the index fell, and the group's median down-week capture was 55.6%. Managed futures funds carried a lower median correlation of +0.48, with 3 of 17 rising in down weeks and a median capture of 39.8%. Volatility funds stood apart: a median correlation of −0.63 and a median down-week capture of −59.1%, a negative number that means they rose, on average, in the same weeks the index fell. Five of the 9 volatility funds counted among the 17 that rose. Market neutral funds, just two in the table, had a median correlation of −0.38 and a median capture of −102.8%. Long-short equity, multi-strategy, event driven and global macro funds each leaned more toward moving with stocks than against them, with median correlations from +0.09 to +0.85.
Individual funds within volatility show the range most starkly. UVXY rose 3.27% on average in down weeks, a capture of −298.1%, while SVXY fell 1.26% in the same weeks, a capture of 115.1%. Both are labelled volatility funds; their behavior in falling markets was close to opposite. Among the 17 funds that rose on average when the index fell, BTAL, with a correlation of −0.69, gained 1.87% on average in those weeks; CCOR, closer to zero correlation, gained just 0.01%.
Rising when stocks fall is a different question from gaining more than cash. Of the 67 funds, 49 finished ahead of T-bills over the same 52 weeks. But only 7 of the 17 funds that rose in down weeks also beat T-bills overall, including KMLM, MKTN, LSEQ, FLSP, MRGR, DBMF and FMF. The other 10 that rose in down weeks, among them UVXY, VXX, VIXY, BTAL, CTA, VXZ, VIXM, QBER, TAIL and CAOS, finished behind T-bills, by as much as 71.1 points in UVXY's case. Holding steadier than stocks in a falling week did not, by itself, translate into a return above the return on cash over the full year.
Readers can look up any fund's full-year correlation, down-week capture and performance against T-bills on ETFIQ's fund pages.