The same stock. A different machine.

Sized to the same maximum loss, dollar for dollar. That is the only honest way to compare them — and even then, equal max loss is not equal risk. The two machines spend the same loss budget in different places, and that difference is the whole story.

The construction — which contracts, at which levels, in which proportions — is the proprietary part, and it stays in the kitchen. What can be shown is what the machine delivers, because every one of these properties is measured on real runs against a live account:

One machine, four temperaments — the next section prices all four, side by side, so you can pick the one that fits.

Same machine, four settings. Every build below is sized to the same $100K of maximum loss on the index — real numbers from a live run, not projections — so you can see exactly what each dial trades away for what it buys.

Real, tool-computed figures from a live index run (SPY, Jul 30), each build re-sized to the same $100K risk budget so the row is the only variable. Leverage is exposure per dollar of capital committed, not a promised return. The mark is a vol-adjusted screen number at a moderate pullback — not a bill, per Section 4.

The rest of this page walks through DIAMOND on the index in detail: of the four, it is the build tuned to hold its marked value best in the 5–30% drawdown band — which is where nearly every real index drawdown actually lives. The same walkthrough applies to any of the four; only the numbers above change.

One year out, both machines sized to the same maximum loss — the index, DIAMOND build. This is what the account would show at each level, if you chose to liquidate that day. Bastion marks ahead everywhere at or above roughly −8%, by 4–6×, and that is where the index has finished the overwhelming majority of its years. In the −10% to −40% band it marks lower than stock — shaded, because that is the part you sit through. Below the floor it goes flat while stock keeps falling.

Those are expected-net figures, not brochure numbers. Every candidate credit is discounted by the odds the market runs at it and what escaping would cost; a write that only looks good before that haircut never makes the board. Gross premium is what sellers advertise; expected net is what lands in the account — and it is the only number this system plans around.

The stream is also what powers the wait. In a drawdown, stock can only sit and hope. Bastion keeps writing above its defended level — reduced income, not zero — so the months a markdown takes to heal are financed months. Drawdown is a season with a payroll, not a verdict to be accepted.

This is where the drawdown fear stops being imagined and starts being measured. The markdown band and the floor are fixed properties of the build; the only question is how often the market actually visits them, and for how long — and for the index, there is nearly a century of answers. Every row below is a real kind of S&P year, with the modeled DIAMOND outcome per $100K of loss budget beside it.

Modeled outcomes on the index book, equal max-loss sizing, per $100K of loss budget. Year examples are S&P calendar-year closes, rounded to the nearest row. The red cells are marks at the year boundary — what the account would show, not money spent; they realize only on unwind.

Now read it top to bottom with the frequencies attached. The green rows are where the index lives: roughly three years in four land there. The markdown rows come about once a decade (2022-class), the deep one once in a generation (2008) — and both were seasons, not endings: 2022’s drawdown round-tripped in about two years, and even 2008’s in about four. Sitting through the round trip is precisely what Bastion is paid for: the income engine keeps writing through every month of it, so the years of the wait arrive with a payroll attached — while the shareholder waits for free.

One more thing the terminal table cannot show, and it is DIAMOND’s whole specialty: the path. Of the four builds, DIAMOND is tuned to hold its marked account value steadiest through the 5–30% drawdown band — which is where nearly every real index drawdown lives and dies. The table above prices the endings; DIAMOND is bought for the ride between them.

Everything above is the index book — the conservative telling. Point the same machine at a high-vol single name like TSLA and everything roughly doubles. The premium runs about twice as dense as the index build — dense enough that on paper a year and a half of challenge-adjusted income rebuilds the entire risk budget, and the machine marks ahead of the shares across the whole modeled range.

That is the whole single-name story, and it needs no more detail than that: the index version of this bet needs the model to be roughly right, the TSLA version needs it to be right and flawlessly executed. Paid much more, to endure much more. Same coin, heavier on both sides — which is why the index book is the telling this page stands on.

If the risks were trivial the premium would not exist. You are being paid precisely because you carry these four things. Read them before the verdict, not after.

Weigh that against the other side of the ledger: a five-figure monthly income stream measured on live quotes, a multiple of the upside in the outcomes that actually happen most years, a worst case that is a chosen number instead of “everything,” and a floor below which the crash is free. The risks are the price tag. We think the item is underpriced.

Equal max loss is not equal risk — it is a reallocation. Bastion concentrates its markdowns into the probable band, where history says they heal in months to a few years, and collects a 30–50× income stream as rent for sitting through them. Pure stock spreads the same budget thinly all the way to zero and collects almost nothing. One of these is a machine built on purpose. The other is a hope with a ticker symbol.

Own the upside. Rent out the noise. Put a floor under the rest. That is the whole pitch — and every number behind it lives in the dashboards next door.