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Drawdown Recovery Calculator

Losses and gains are not symmetrical. A 50% loss needs a 100% gain to undo, because the gain is measured against a smaller account. Enter your peak balance and your balance now to see exactly what recovery costs.

Calculate your recovery

Your account's high-water mark, not your starting deposit.

Optional — used only for the trade count.

Gain needed to recover
42.9%
Drawdown
30.0%
Amount below peak
$30,000
Winning trades to recover
13

The trade count assumes every trade wins and each gain compounds on the last, so treat it as a floor rather than a forecast. A balance at or above the peak reports zero — there is no drawdown to recover.

The best drawdown is the one you stop early

tradempower tracks your drawdown live against a ceiling you set while calm, and says so on screen the moment you cross it — at exactly the point that decision is hardest to make alone. Seven days of Pro, no card.

Start freeSee how it works

How to calculate drawdown recovery

Two steps, and the second is where the asymmetry appears.

  1. Drawdown % = (peak − current) ÷ peak. A $100,000 account now at $70,000 is 30% down.
  2. Required gain % = drawdown ÷ (100 − drawdown). Here that is 30 ÷ 70 = 42.9%.

The dollars are unchanged — you need $30,000 either way. What changed is the base you have to make it from. Losing 30% costs you 30% of $100,000; making it back means earning 42.9% of $70,000. The deeper the hole, the wider that gap gets.

The curve is not linear. Recovering 10% takes 11.1%. Recovering 50% takes 100%. Recovering 90% takes 900% — which is why the practical goal is never getting there, not getting back.

Why drawdowns punish twice

A drawdown does two things at once. It takes capital, and it takes the compounding that capital would have done. Those are separate costs, and the second one never shows up on a statement.

It also does something the arithmetic cannot capture: it changes how you trade. Traders in a deep drawdown size up to get back faster, take setups they would normally pass on, and hold losers past the stop because realising the loss makes the number real. Each of those is a rational-feeling response that deepens the hole. The same sizing decision that caused the drawdown is the one that decides whether you survive it.

How long recovery actually takes

Percentages hide time. If your average winner returns 3% of equity, a 42.9% recovery is roughly twelve consecutive winning trades with nothing going wrong in between — which is not how trading works. Realistically it is several months of net-positive months, and the calculator's trade count is a floor, not an estimate.

That is the number worth sitting with before deciding what to risk on the next trade.

Common mistakes in a drawdown

  • Sizing up to recover faster. It raises the variance of an account that has already proven it can lose, and it is how a recoverable drawdown becomes a terminal one.
  • Measuring drawdown from your starting balance instead of your peak. The high-water mark is the reference point; anything else flatters the number.
  • Counting open losses as "not real yet". An unrealized loss is a real reduction in the capital available to compound.
  • Changing strategy mid-drawdown. A drawdown is expected behaviour for a working edge; abandoning it at the low is how you lock the loss in permanently.
  • Not knowing your historical maximum. If you have never measured it, every drawdown feels unprecedented.

Know your drawdown before you are in one

Maximum drawdown is a number worth knowing in advance, because it is the one your risk limits should be set against. tradempower tracks it continuously from your equity curve and can hold you to a ceiling you set while calm — a guardrail that warns you at the point the decision is hardest.

Drawdown recovery table

Drawdown from peakGain needed to recover
5%5.3%
10%11.1%
20%25.0%
25%33.3%
30%42.9%
40%66.7%
50%100.0%
60%150.0%
75%300.0%
90%900.0%

Drawdown Recovery Calculator FAQ

What gain do I need to recover a 20% drawdown?

25%. The general formula is drawdown ÷ (100 − drawdown): 20 ÷ 80 = 25%. The gap between the two figures widens as the drawdown deepens — 30% needs 42.9%, 50% needs 100%, and 80% needs 400%.

Why does a 50% loss need a 100% gain?

Because the gain is calculated on the reduced balance. Halving $100,000 leaves $50,000, and getting back to $100,000 from there means doubling — a 100% gain. The dollar amount is the same $50,000 in both directions; only the base changed.

Should drawdown be measured on closed trades or equity?

On equity, including open positions. A closed-trade-only measure understates the risk you were actually carrying, because it ignores every position that was deeply underwater before it recovered.

What is an acceptable maximum drawdown?

There is no universal figure, but many discretionary traders treat 20% as a serious warning line and 30% as a stop-trading point. What matters is deciding the number before you are near it — the threshold you would accept while down 25% is not one you would have set while flat.

How many trades does it take to recover?

Divide the required gain by your average winning trade, compounding rather than adding — this calculator does that when you supply an average gain. Treat the answer as a best case, since it assumes no losing trades in between.

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