Your end-of-year value at every possible market decline. The flat shelf is the coupon machine working; the drop is the barrier. The straight line is just owning the index. Drag the slider — the marker moves.
Simplified single-position model — see the honest assumptions below the results.
The honest assumptions: this models a single autocallable position — real funds hold ladders of dozens to hundreds with different start dates, so their barriers breach gradually (a steep slope, not one cliff edge), and volatility-target funds automatically de-risk as markets fall. If breached, we credit half a year of coupons before the income stops. The covered-call line assumes ~90% downside participation plus ~10% annual premium income; the index line adds a ~1.5% dividend. All figures are illustrative mechanics, not predictions for any real fund.
What This Tool Is Really Showing You
Autocallable income has a personality: it is calm almost always, and terrible all at once. The simulator makes the trade visible. In every scenario left of the barrier, the autocallable strategy is the best performer on the page — collecting its coupons while the index bleeds. That's not a trick; it's genuinely what the machine does, and it's why the category gathered billions in its first year. The cliff is the price of all that calm. One more slider-notch of decline can swing the outcome from "best in class" to "index-sized loss and the income stopped" — and in real crashes, nobody gets to choose which side of the barrier they land on.
How Real Funds Soften (and Don't Soften) the Cliff
Real autocallable ETFs improve on this single-position picture in two honest ways: ladders (many positions, many start dates — so a crash breaches some barriers but not others) and, in some funds, volatility targeting (the index de-risks automatically as markets get wild). What no design can remove is the fundamental trade — the coupons exist because someone must absorb deep-crash losses, and that someone is the fund. The explainer covers each design's dials, and every fund's actual payment behavior lives on the census page — including the First-Check Watch on the seven funds that haven't paid yet.
See What the Category Actually Pays
All 28 autocallable ETFs, with live payment data for the 18 that have real records — no targets, no hype.
Open the Complete Fund List