Replay your holdings through five real crises, from the 2008 financial crisis to the 2025 tariff selloff. The method step by step, a sample result, and what Exent shows when you run it on your own portfolio.
Take what each of your holdings did from the 2007 market peak to the March 2009 low, weight it by how much of your money is in it today, and add the results. That is your 2008 replay. It is not a forecast. It shows how the portfolio you own now was built to behave the last time credit froze and the economy shrank.
Most portfolios that look fine in a calm year fail this test in one specific place: one or two positions that fell far more than the market. The step‑by‑step background is in the portfolio stress test guide.
| Crisis | Window | SPY peak to trough | What it tests |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global financial crisis | Oct 2007 – Mar 2009 | −56.5% | Banks, leverage, cyclicals |
| US‑China trade war | Sep – Dec 2018 | −20.2% | Chips, industrials, global trade |
| COVID‑19 crash | Feb – Mar 2020 | −34.1% | A sudden shock to everything |
| Inflation and rate hikes | Jan – Oct 2022 | −25.4% | Growth stocks, long bonds |
| 2025 tariff selloff | Feb – Apr 2025 | −19.0% | Tariff-exposed and high-valuation stocks |
If a holding did not trade during a crisis, it has no figure for that window. Note it rather than inventing one.
Sample portfolio: 40% SPY, 25% QQQ, 20% Apple (AAPL), 15% Nvidia (NVDA). Peak‑to‑trough drops from Exent’s data, as of Sep 30, 2026.
| Holding | Weight | 2008 | 2018 | 2020 | 2022 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SPY | 40% | −56.5% | −20.2% | −34.1% | −25.4% | −19.0% |
| QQQ | 25% | −53.6% | −22.9% | −28.6% | −34.6% | −22.9% |
| AAPL | 20% | −60.9% | −36.7% | −30.7% | −28.5% | −30.2% |
| NVDA | 15% | −85.1% | −56.0% | −37.6% | −61.8% | −32.7% |
| Sample portfolio | 100% | −60.9% | −29.6% | −32.6% | −33.8% | −24.3% |
| SPY alone | −56.5% | −20.2% | −34.1% | −25.4% | −19.0% |
The sample portfolio fell more than SPY in four of five replays. The gap is widest in 2018 and 2022, and it comes mostly from Nvidia: 15% of the money, but 28% of the replayed loss in 2018 and 27% in 2022. That is the kind of line a crash test exists to find. See Nvidia’s data page for its full history, and the history of stock market crashes for what drove each episode.
The next crisis will not copy any of these five. Companies change: Nvidia in 2008 was a much smaller business than it is today. Use the replays to find the positions that drive your losses and to size them so you could hold through a bad year, not to predict or time the next fall. For the dollar view, see how much you would lose in a crash.
Multiply each holding’s drop from the October 2007 peak to the March 2009 low by its weight today and add them up. SPY fell 56.5% in that window in Exent’s data.
One that replays your real holdings through several different crises and shows which positions drive the loss. Exent replays five crises from 2008 to 2025 inside its trial; a spreadsheet works too if you gather the drawdowns yourself.
Different crises hit different holdings. A portfolio can hold up in a sudden shock like COVID and still fall far more than the market in a rate-driven bear market like 2022.
Then there is no 2008 figure for it. Some investors use a similar fund as a stand-in, but note it, because a proxy is a guess.
Upload a screenshot of your holdings and get concentration, overlap, crash exposure and a risk-matched benchmark in about a minute.
Educational content, not investment advice. Examples are illustrative; past performance does not guarantee future results.