Free tool

Drawdown Recovery & Losing Streak Calculator

See how much you need to gain to recover from a trading loss, and how a streak of losing trades erodes your account at different risk levels.

Recovering from a loss

Account drawdown: 30%

Gain needed to get back to even

42.9%

After losing 30%, $10,000 becomes $7,000

Lose 5%

+5%

Lose 10%

+11%

Lose 20%

+25%

Lose 30%

+43%

Lose 40%

+67%

Lose 50%

+100%

Lose 60%

+150%

Lose 75%

+300%

Lose 90%

+900%

Losing streak simulator

Risk per trade (%)

Losses in a row

Drawdown after the streak

14.9%

Then you need +17.5% to recover

0.5% risk

−3.9%

1% risk

−7.7%

2% risk

−14.9%

5% risk

−33.7%

Losing streaks are normal: with a 50% win rate, a run of 8 losses in a row will happen eventually if you trade long enough.

Losses and gains aren't symmetrical

Lose 10% and you need 11% to get back. Lose 50% and you need 100%. Lose 90% and you need 900%. This asymmetry is the single most important reason to keep risk per trade small.

Streaks are inevitable

Even a strategy that wins 55% of the time will suffer runs of six, eight or ten losses over hundreds of trades. At 1% risk per trade, eight straight losses cost about 7.7% of the account. At 5% risk, the same streak costs about 34% — and you'd need over 50% to recover.

That's why regulators, professional risk managers and experienced traders focus on position sizing first. Use the position size calculator to turn a risk percentage into a trade size.

Questions

How much gain do I need to recover a 50% loss?

100%. After a 50% loss, $10,000 becomes $5,000, which must double to get back to $10,000.