Free drawdown recovery calculator
See the gain you need to recover from a loss, and roughly how long it takes. No sign-up.
A loss is harder to win back than it looks, because you recover from a smaller balance. Enter your drawdown to see the gain you need, and add an average monthly return to see roughly how long it takes.
The formula
Gain needed = 1 / (1 - drawdown) - 1. A 20% loss needs a 25% gain, not 20%.
| Drawdown | Gain needed to recover |
|---|---|
| 10% | 11.1% |
| 20% | 25% |
| 30% | 42.9% |
| 50% | 100% |
| 70% | 233.3% |
Why it matters for your journal
Maximum drawdown is the single number that tells you how much pain a strategy has put you through. Your journal should show it next to win rate and profit factor. See win rate, profit factor and expectancy explained, and size trades with the position size calculator so one bad trade cannot cause a deep drawdown.
The months-to-recover figure assumes a steady average return, which real trading does not give you. Treat it as a rough guide. This calculator is for education. It is not trading or investment advice.
Recovery table for common drawdowns
The table starts from a hypothetical $10,000 account so you can see the balance left after the loss. The gain needed does not depend on the starting figure; it is only a function of the percentage lost.
| Drawdown | Balance left (from $10,000) | Gain needed to get back to $10,000 |
|---|---|---|
| 5% | $9,500 | 5.3% |
| 10% | $9,000 | 11.1% |
| 15% | $8,500 | 17.6% |
| 20% | $8,000 | 25.0% |
| 25% | $7,500 | 33.3% |
| 30% | $7,000 | 42.9% |
| 40% | $6,000 | 66.7% |
| 50% | $5,000 | 100.0% |
| 60% | $4,000 | 150.0% |
| 75% | $2,500 | 300.0% |
| 90% | $1,000 | 900.0% |
The curve is gentle at first and then bends sharply. Going from a 10% to a 20% drawdown adds about 14 percentage points to the gain you need. Going from 50% to 60% adds 50 points, and from 75% to 90% adds 600. That is why most risk rules focus on keeping drawdowns shallow rather than on winning them back later.
Why the arithmetic is lopsided
A 20% loss on $10,000 leaves $8,000. To return to $10,000 you need to earn $2,000, but that $2,000 is 25% of the $8,000 you now have. The loss was measured against the bigger balance and the recovery is measured against the smaller one. Every drawdown works this way, which is why the formula is simply 1 / (1 - drawdown) - 1.
It also bears on position sizing. If you risk a fixed percentage of the current balance on each trade, your dollar risk shrinks after losses, so the recovery is slower than a fixed-dollar plan would suggest. The calculator treats recovery as a single percentage gain on what is left, which is the right way to think about it for any balance.
How long recovery takes at a steady return
These figures assume a hypothetical, perfectly steady monthly return, which no real account produces. They are here to show the shape of the problem, not to set a target.
| Drawdown | At 2% a month | At 3% a month | At 5% a month |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10% | 5.3 months | 3.6 months | 2.2 months |
| 20% | 11.3 months | 7.5 months | 4.6 months |
| 30% | 18.0 months | 12.1 months | 7.3 months |
| 50% | 35.0 months | 23.4 months | 14.2 months |
Read down the 2% column: a 10% drawdown takes about five months of unbroken gains to repair, while a 50% drawdown takes about 35 months, nearly three years. Real returns arrive unevenly and a further losing month restarts part of the climb. If your own journal shows an average monthly result well below 2%, the recovery times above are optimistic.
How fast a losing streak becomes a drawdown
If you risk a fixed percentage of the current balance on every trade and lose several in a row, the drawdown compounds like this (spread and slippage ignored):
| Risk per trade | After 5 losses in a row | After 10 in a row | After 15 in a row |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5% | 2.5% | 4.9% | 7.2% |
| 1% | 4.9% | 9.6% | 14.0% |
| 2% | 9.6% | 18.3% | 26.1% |
| 5% | 22.6% | 40.1% | 53.7% |
At 1% per trade, ten consecutive losses cost about 9.6% of the account. At 5% per trade the same streak costs about 40.1%, and getting that back needs a gain of roughly 67%. Losing streaks of that length are normal over a few hundred trades (see the losing streak calculator), so the risk percentage you pick today decides how deep your worst run will be.
What to record about drawdowns in your journal
- The peak and the trough. Note the date and balance of the high, the date and balance of the low, and the date you got back to the high. Those three dates give you depth, length and recovery time.
- Risk per trade during the drawdown. Many traders raise their size to win the money back faster, which is the opposite of what the table above says is safe. Your journal will show whether you did.
- Rule-breaking trades. Mark which losers followed your plan and which did not. A drawdown made of plan-following losses means the strategy is in a bad patch; one made of rule-breaking losses is a discipline problem. See how to stop revenge trading and trading tilt.
- Your state of mind. A one-line note on how you felt after the third loss in a row is often more useful than the chart.
MetaTrader 5's history shows each closed trade, and the Strategy Tester report lists a maximal drawdown for backtests, but live drawdown across weeks is something you build from your trade log. Our guide to tracking drawdown in MT5 shows the method.
Limits of this calculator
- It works in percentages, so deposits and withdrawals during the drawdown are not handled. Measure from the peak balance after adjusting for any money you moved in or out.
- The months-to-recover figure assumes a constant return. Real accounts have gaps, flat months and further losses.
- It does not know your strategy. A trend system with a 35% win rate and a scalping system with a 70% win rate have very different drawdown shapes at the same risk per trade.
Frequently asked questions
How much do I need to gain to recover a 50% loss?
Why is recovery harder than the loss?
What is maximum drawdown?
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- Free trading compounding calculator
- Free losing streak calculator
- Prop firm drawdown calculator (daily and maximum loss)
- Prop firm risk calculator: how many losing trades until the limit
- Risk of ruin calculator for traders
- All trading journal comparisons
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