Drawdown Recovery Calculator

A drawdown is how far your account has fallen from its highest point. It is the number traders feel most and calculate least, because the road back is not the same distance as the road down.

The reason is arithmetic. Lose 50% of an account and you are left with half. To get back to the original balance, that half has to double, which is a 100% gain, not 50%. The deeper the loss, the steeper the climb: a 20% drawdown needs a 25% gain, a loss of one third needs 50%, and a 75% drawdown needs 300%.

That asymmetry is why risk control matters more than it first appears. Protecting against a large loss is worth more than an equal-sized gain, because the loss has to be earned back from a smaller balance. It is also why a drawdown that looks manageable on paper can take far longer to recover than it took to lose.

Use the calculator to see your number, then check your real drawdown. The trading performance analyzer calculates the maximum drawdown in your own trade history, along with the other numbers that explain how you got there.