- Also known as:
- drawdown duration, recovery time, time to recover, drawdown recovery, underwater period, drawdown length
Time under water is the duration of a drawdown — how long an investment stays below a previous high.
Max drawdown tells you how deep the worst drop was. Time under water tells you how long the pain lasted.
Peak-to-recovery vs trough-to-recovery
There are two related “duration” ideas people mix together:
Time under water (peak → recovery): time from the prior peak until the price gets back to (or above) that peak.
Recovery time (trough → recovery): time from the drawdown low (the trough) until the price gets back to (or above) the prior peak.
Both matter. A deep drawdown that recovers quickly can be easier to stomach than a shallow drawdown that drags on for years.
How we report recovery time at Gale Finance
On compare pages and scorecards, when we show “Recovered in X days” / “It took X days to recover,” we mean:
- Calendar days from trough to recovery for the max-drawdown event in the analysis window.
If the series doesn’t recover to its prior peak within the window, we say so.
For depth, see maximum drawdown. For a metric that blends depth and duration, see Ulcer Index.