Drawdown Recovery Calculator
The asymmetry of loss, made obvious. A drawdown always needs a bigger percentage gain to recover — and it gets worse fast.
Inputs
Results
You lost
30%
You must gain
42.86%
| Drawdown | Required Gain |
|---|---|
| −10% | +11.11% |
| −20% | +25.00% |
| −30% | +42.86% |
| −40% | +66.67% |
| −50% | +100.00% |
| −60% | +150.00% |
| −70% | +233.33% |
| −80% | +400.00% |
| −90% | +900.00% |
How it works
The formula is simple: requiredGain% = drawdown / (100 − drawdown) × 100. But the math hides a brutal reality — losing money is not symmetric with making money back.
Why the asymmetry?If you lose 50%, you don't have 100% of your capital left to work with. You have 50%. That remaining half needs to double before you're back to even — a 100% gain, not a 50% gain. As drawdowns get deeper the recovery gap grows non-linearly: 25% requires 33%, 50% requires 100%, 75% requires 300%, 90% requires 900%.
Capital preservation is the real edge.This is why every disciplined trader talks about drawdown control before they talk about strategy. A 90% winning strategy that occasionally takes a 60% loss is worse than a 55% winner that never exceeds 15% drawdown, because the second trader doesn't have to spend years climbing back out of a hole. Size positions with the Position Size Calculator first; build a system that keeps its worst drawdown small; and the compounding math will do the rest.
The best cure for drawdown recovery math is not falling into deep drawdown in the first place. Start with correct position sizing.
Position Size Calculator →