Drawdown Recovery Calculator
How much you need to gain to recover a drawdown - and why drawdown matters more than people realise.
Inputs
Result
The drawdown asymmetry
| Drawdown | Required gain to recover |
|---|---|
| -5% | +5.3% |
| -10% | +11.1% |
| -15% | +17.6% |
| -20% | +25.0% |
| -25% | +33.3% |
| -30% | +42.9% |
| -40% | +66.7% |
| -50% | +100.0% |
| -60% | +150.0% |
| -75% | +300.0% |
| -90% | +900.0% |
A 50% drawdown requires a 100% gain to recover. A 75% drawdown requires 300%.
How to use this
Drawdown is asymmetric: the deeper it goes, the more disproportionately hard it is to recover. A 10% loss only needs an 11% gain to get back. A 50% loss needs a 100% gain. A 75% loss needs a 300% gain - which is why traders who let drawdown grow into "I'll just have one big winner" territory rarely come back from it.
The practical implication: aggressive position sizing isn't just "more risk for more reward." It's "more risk for asymmetrically harder recovery if it goes wrong." This is why disciplined traders cap risk at 1-2% per trade and pause trading when they hit a daily, weekly, or monthly drawdown limit. Capital preservation isn't a defensive mindset - it's the math of compounding.
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