Tools · free
Drawdown Recovery Calculator
A loss and its recovery are not symmetric. Enter how far you're down and see the gain you actually need to get back to break-even — the math every risk manager respects.
Estimate only, not financial advice.
How it's calculated
- D — your current drawdown, as a percentage of the peak balance (between 0 and 100)
- 100 − D — the percentage of the peak balance you have left
- Gain needed — the percentage return on the reduced balance required to get back to the peak
Worked example
Your account peaked at $10,000 and is now down 25%, at $7,500.
Gain needed = 25 ÷ (100 − 25) × 100 = 25 ÷ 75 × 100 = +33.33%.
Check: $7,500 × 1.3333 ≈ $10,000. A 25% loss needs a 33.33% gain to break even — not 25%.
Run it on your real trades
SignalDeck computes all of this automatically from your journaled trades — R-multiple, expectancy, SQN, Kelly, drawdown. Free during beta.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why does a bigger drawdown need a disproportionately larger gain?
Because the gain is calculated on the smaller, post-loss balance. Lose 50% and you have half left — you now need to double (+100%) just to get back to even. The deeper the hole, the steeper the climb.
What is drawdown?
Drawdown is the peak-to-trough decline in your account, usually expressed as a percentage of the peak. It's the single most important risk number a prop firm — and your own survival — cares about.
How much gain do I need to recover a 20% drawdown?
You need a 25% gain to recover a 20% drawdown. A $10,000 account down 20% is at $8,000, and $8,000 has to grow by $2,000 — 25% of $8,000 — to get back to $10,000.
What drawdown is too big to recover from?
There is no hard cutoff, but the required gain accelerates sharply past 30–40%: a 30% drawdown needs +42.86%, a 40% drawdown needs +66.67%, and a 50% drawdown needs +100%. That is why most risk plans and prop firms cap drawdown at around 5–10%, where the recovery gain (+5.26% to +11.11%) stays close to the loss.
How does risk per trade affect drawdown?
Lower risk per trade makes every losing streak shallower. Ten losses in a row at 1% risk per trade (compounded) leave you down about 9.6%, which needs roughly +10.6% to recover; the same streak at 5% risk leaves you down about 40.1%, which needs roughly +67% to recover.
Watch your drawdown in real time instead of after the fact: SignalDeck Live Drawdown Monitor tracks it against your prop-firm limits, and SignalDeck Analytics charts it across your whole journal.