Drawdown recovery calculator
Losses and gains are not symmetric: a 50% loss needs a 100% gain to recover. Enter any drawdown to see the exact gain required to break even — the most important piece of arithmetic in risk management.
By Mustafa Bilgic · Published 2026-06-27 · Last updated 2026-06-27
Drawdown Recovery Calculator
The gain needed to climb back from a loss
| Drawdown | Gain required to break even |
|---|
Why losses hurt more than equal gains help
Drawdowns and gains are not symmetric, and that asymmetry is the single most important piece of arithmetic in risk management. When you lose a percentage of your account, the gain needed to get back to even is always larger than the loss, because you are now growing a smaller base. The formula is simple:
recovery gain % = drawdown / (1 − drawdown) × 100
Lose 10% and you need +11.1% to recover. Lose 20% and you need +25%. Lose 50% and you need a full +100% — you have to double what is left just to get back to where you started. By the time a drawdown reaches 90%, recovery requires a +900% return. This is why professional traders obsess over keeping drawdowns shallow: the math of recovery turns vicious very fast.
What this means for a trading bot
Because deep drawdowns demand exponentially larger recoveries, the entire point of position sizing and risk limits is to keep your worst peak-to-trough decline in a zone you can realistically climb out of. A bot that risks 1% per trade can absorb a long losing streak and stay in single-digit recovery territory; one that risks 10% can be staring at a +100% mountain after a handful of bad trades. Use this alongside the risk-of-ruin simulator to see how bet size sets the depth of the hole, and the risk-management guide for the maximum-drawdown limits that stop a bot before recovery becomes hopeless.
A worked example
Say a $10,000 account suffers a 35% drawdown. The balance at the low is $6,500, and the recovery gain is 0.35 / 0.65 = +53.8%. Earning back $3,500 on a $6,500 base is a 53.8% return — far harder than the 35% it took to lose it. That gap between the loss and the required recovery is precisely what compounding works against you when risk is left uncontrolled.
Frequently asked questions
How much do I need to gain to recover a drawdown?
The required gain is drawdown / (1 minus drawdown). A 20% loss needs +25%, a 33% loss needs +50%, and a 50% loss needs +100% — you must double the remaining balance. The deeper the loss, the disproportionately larger the recovery.
Why is the recovery gain larger than the loss?
Because after a loss you are growing a smaller base. Losing 50% leaves you with half your money, so getting back to the original amount means doubling what remains, which is a 100% gain, not a 50% one.
What is a healthy maximum drawdown for a trading bot?
It depends on strategy and risk tolerance, but many practitioners treat drawdowns beyond 20 to 30% as a serious warning because recovery becomes increasingly hard. Keeping per-trade risk small is the main lever for keeping maximum drawdown shallow.
Is this calculator free and private?
Yes. It runs entirely in your browser with no signup, and nothing you enter is sent anywhere or stored.