Transparency is a feature. This page explains what the drawdown episode table measures and why we compute it — in plain terms. The precise formulas and numeric conventions are documented in our internal methodology; the summary here is deliberate, not an omission.
Where md reports the single deepest drawdown, this enumerates every underwater episode along the wealth path — the data behind an "underwater" table or a drawdown timeline.
We follow the same growth-of-a-dollar wealth path used across the drawdown suite, tracking a running high-water mark as it rises. A drawdown episode is a stretch during which wealth sits below its most recent high. Each episode records where it began (the peak it fell from), its lowest point (the trough) and how far below the peak that low was (the depth, always zero or negative), and where it ended — the first later moment wealth climbs back to the old high and reclaims it. An episode that is still underwater when the series runs out is marked unrecovered rather than given an invented recovery date. We also report the episode's timing in period counts: how long the decline lasted, how long the climb back took, and the total span.
By design the deepest episode in this table lines up with the single-drawdown figures: its depth equals max_drawdown, and its trough and recovery points match the detailed single-drawdown view. The peak refers to the same wealth level, but when that level is touched more than once the two views break the tie differently — an episode credits the most recent high it fell from, while the single-drawdown view takes the first.
Episodes are listed in chronological order. To rank them by severity, sort by depth with the most negative first; the API and UI do this to produce a "worst N" view. A series that never falls below a prior high yields an empty list, not an error. Touching a prior peak exactly counts as a recovery.
An empty return series has nothing to measure and cannot produce a table. An unrecovered tail episode leaves its recovery point and the associated lengths blank and is flagged as not recovered — we never fabricate a recovery date that did not happen.
