Most strategies sell you a return number. We pay equal attention to a question that matters more as you near the years you'll actually spend the money: if your portfolio falls, how long until you are back to where you were?
Two strategies can post the same annual return and feel nothing alike. One drifts down a few percent and recovers in weeks. The other plunges, then takes years to climb back. The headline number is identical; the lived experience, and the risk to your plans, is not.
We measure that difference directly and build around it. The goal is simple to state: earn a strong return while keeping the time you spend recovering from a decline within a range you can accept. What counts as acceptable naturally tightens as you move from early career toward retirement, when you have less time to wait out a loss. The framework is the same; the right setting is personal.
How far a portfolio has fallen from its most recent high point. A 15% drawdown means you are 15% below the best value your account has reached. It measures the depth of a decline.
How long it takes to climb back to that previous high after a decline, and return to making new progress. It measures the duration of a decline, the stretch you have to endure before your capital is compounding again.
Most managers talk about return and, at most, volatility. We think drawdown and recovery period are more honest and more useful, because they describe what you would actually feel holding the strategy through a rough patch.
Across its first year, the firm's own account, managed under the strategy, returned roughly double the S&P 500 while living through a real decline and recovering from it. We show the decline on purpose: pullbacks are part of investing, and the point is not to pretend they don't happen but to come back from them.
From its high in late October 2025, a client account declined about 20% net of fees into a late-March 2026 low, then climbed back and set a new high in late May. Measured the honest way, from the prior high until that high was regained, the recovery period was about seven months. A decline of that depth is real, and a strategy that pursues higher returns can fall further, and take longer to recover, than the index in a given stretch. Our focus is on not staying down: getting back to high-water marks so capital can keep compounding rather than spending years just getting even.
Returns are for the firm's own account from June 13, 2025 through June 18, 2026. Net figures reflect the planned 3.00% introductory founding-client rate; see full disclosures below and on the home page. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
Our rules-based process measures drawdown and recovery for every candidate holding and for the portfolio as a whole, and selects an asset mix designed to deliver the most return we can for a recovery profile we judge acceptable. It is a systematic discipline rather than a reaction to headlines, which is what lets the strategy stay consistent through good markets and bad.
We keep the specifics of our signals and calculations proprietary, but we are glad to walk prospective clients through the full methodology, including how the approach has behaved over longer historical periods, in a direct conversation. If the way we think about risk resonates, that is the right next step.