Drawdown Recovery Calculator
A loss and the gain needed to undo it are not symmetric. Lose 20% and you need more than 20% to get back – you need 25%. Lose 50% and you need a full 100% just to break even. Enter any percentage loss and this calculator shows the exact gain required to recover, along with a table of the common drawdowns every trader should have burned into memory.
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Formula: Gain needed = 100 × Loss ÷ (100 − Loss). The math is unforgiving: a −50% drawdown needs a +100% gain, and a −90% drawdown needs +900%. Results are an aid, not financial advice.
The drawdown table every trader should know
The deeper the hole, the steeper the climb – and it accelerates fast. These are the recovery gains for the drawdowns you are most likely to face:
| Drawdown (loss) | Gain needed 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% |
How the drawdown recovery calculator works
When you lose a percentage of your capital, the gain you need to recover is calculated on a smaller base – so it always exceeds the loss. After a 20% drawdown you have 80 cents on the dollar; turning 80 back into 100 is a 25% gain, not 20%. The relationship is Gain = 100 × Loss ÷ (100 − Loss), and it grows non-linearly: the curve is nearly flat for small losses and shoots toward infinity as the loss approaches 100%.
Why the asymmetry matters
This is the single most important reason capital preservation beats aggressive returns. A trader who never lets a drawdown exceed 20% only ever needs a 25% recovery; one who blows through to −60% needs to triple-and-a-half what is left. Avoiding deep drawdowns is mathematically easier than recovering from them – which is exactly why a hard equity stop, or drawdown kill-switch, belongs in every risk plan. See also why survival beats strategy.
Frequently asked questions
Why does a 50% loss need a 100% gain?
What is a drawdown?
How do I limit my drawdown?
Recovery examples and limits
A 20% loss requires a 25% gain; 30% requires 42.86%; 50% requires 100%; 60% requires 150%, meaning 2.5 times the remaining capital; 70% requires 233.33%. At a 100% loss there is no finite recovery percentage without new funding. A deposit increases balance but is not strategy profit. The table cannot determine how long recovery will take. Changing risk changes the entire outcome distribution; test it in Monte Carlo and control aggregate exposure rather than treating the recovery percentage as a trade target.
