That sucks, man. Sorry about that. On the bright side, a downward market is the worst time to be buying votes since you pay a higher price for the vote, but it diminishes as the price of Steem drops. Then you get hosed when it pays out if the price keeps going down, you get paid out the lower amount, but the internal price is higher (because of the three day trailing average) so you get fewer SP than you should.

So even though you didn't do as great because you weren't buying votes, you could have lost money if you had been buying votes through the big dips. Hopefully that helps you feel better about the experiment.