Drawdown Recovery Calculator
See the gain you need to recover from a losing streak. Enter your peak account value and your current value, and the calculator shows your drawdown and the percentage gain it would take to get back to even. It is the math that explains why protecting capital matters more than chasing returns.
Gain needed to recover
+25.0%
Drawdown
-20.0%
Amount below peak
$2,000.00
Dollars to get back to even
$2,000.00
Gain needed to recover from a drawdown
| Drawdown | Gain to recover |
|---|---|
| -5% | +5.3% |
| -10% | +11.1% |
| -20% | +25.0% |
| -30% | +42.9% |
| -40% | +66.7% |
| -50% | +100.0% |
| -60% | +150.0% |
| -75% | +300.0% |
| -90% | +900.0% |
For education only. This is not investment advice. All trading involves risk, and past performance is not indicative of future results.
Why recovering from a drawdown is harder than it looks
Losses and gains are not symmetric. A 50% loss and a 50% gain do not cancel out, because the gain is calculated on the smaller balance left after the loss. The deeper the hole, the steeper the climb out:
- A 10% drawdown needs about an 11% gain to recover.
- A 25% drawdown needs about a 33% gain.
- A 50% drawdown needs a 100% gain, you have to double what is left.
- A 75% drawdown needs a 300% gain to get back to even.
The formula is simple: recovery gain = drawdown / (1 minus drawdown). The takeaway is that avoiding a large drawdown in the first place is worth far more than a big rebound afterward.
Drawdown in copy trading
When you copy a trader, you inherit their drawdowns, not just their best months. A strategy can have a high win rate and still put you through a deep decline that takes a long time to recover from. Look at drawdown alongside win rate and risk/reward before you follow anyone. Pair this with the position size calculator and the risk/reward calculator, and read copy trading risks and how to manage them and can you lose money copy trading. With RelayTrades, you set daily-loss caps and exposure limits that are enforced server-side before any copied order is placed, so a bad run has hard boundaries.