Drawdown Recovery Calculator
How much gain do you need to recover a trading loss? A 20% drawdown needs +25%, a 50% drawdown needs +100%. See any drawdown, and how deep a losing streak takes you.
- Winners in a row to recover
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- Drawdown after the losing streak
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- Same streak, fixed $ risk
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- Gain needed after the streak
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Drawdown recovery table (at your risk per trade and average win)
| Drawdown | Gain needed | Winners needed | Losses in a row to get there |
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Losing streaks at your risk per trade
| Losses in a row | Drawdown | Gain needed |
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How much you need to make back a loss
A drawdown is the fall from an account's peak. Getting it back always takes a bigger percentage gain than the loss: −10% needs +11.11%, −20% needs +25%, −50% needs +100% and −90% needs +900%. This calculator shows the gain needed for any drawdown, how many winning trades that takes at your risk per trade, and how deep an ordinary losing streak takes you.
How to use it
- Enter a drawdown percentage to see the gain needed to get back to the peak.
- Enter your risk per trade and average win in R to see how many winners in a row the recovery takes.
- Enter a losing streak to see the drawdown it causes, both when risk is a percentage of the current balance and when it is a fixed dollar amount.
- Scan the tables from 5% to 90% to see where losses start to become very hard to recover.
The formulas
- Gain needed = 1 ÷ (1 − drawdown) − 1
- Drawdown after n losses at risk r of the current balance = 1 − (1 − r)n; with a fixed dollar risk it is n × r of the starting balance
- Winners needed = ln(1 ÷ (1 − drawdown)) ÷ ln(1 + r × R), rounded up
Worked examples
Example 1: a 20% drawdown. A $10,000 account falls to $8,000. Getting back to $10,000 needs $2,000, which is 25% of $8,000. Risking 1% per trade with 2R winners, that takes 12 winners in a row, and many more trades once the losers in between are counted.
Example 2: a ten-trade losing streak. Ten losses in a row at 1% of the current balance leave a drawdown of 9.56%, which needs +10.57% to recover. At 2% per trade the same streak is 18.29%, and at 5% it is 40.13%, which needs +67.02%.
Example 3: the deep end. A 50% drawdown needs +100%. Even with 2R winners at 1% risk that is 36 winners in a row. A 75% drawdown needs +300%.
Why risk per trade decides everything
Losing streaks are normal, even for methods that make money over time. A method that wins 45% of the time has a 55% chance of losing any trade. Over 300 trades, the chance of at least one run of six losses is about 98%, of eight about 68% and of ten about 29%; the expectancy calculator works out the odds for your own win rate. You cannot choose the streak. You can choose the risk per trade, and that decides whether the streak costs 10% or 40%.
Common mistakes
- Raising size to win it back. Doubling up after losses (martingale) turns an ordinary streak into a deep drawdown. See why martingale is dangerous on gold.
- Thinking −20% and +20% cancel out. They do not: 0.8 × 1.2 = 0.96, still 4% down.
- Using a fixed lot size as the account shrinks. The same lots become a larger share of a smaller balance.
- Not planning the streak in advance. Decide now what you do after five or eight losses: smaller size, a break, a journal review.
Read how to handle a gold trading losing streak, the XAUUSD risk management lesson, and size every trade from the current balance with the position size calculator.
Before you plug a strategy into any calculator, check how it actually behaved on gold: our gold trading strategies, tested and gold indicator settings, tested hubs show real XAUUSD results with costs, including the losing streaks.
Frequently asked questions
How much do I need to gain to recover from a drawdown?
Gain needed = 1 ÷ (1 − drawdown) − 1. A 10% drawdown needs +11.11%, 20% needs +25%, 30% needs +42.86%, 50% needs +100% and 90% needs +900%.
Why is it harder to recover a loss than to make it?
Because the gain is earned on a smaller balance. After losing 50% of $10,000 you have $5,000, and you must make $5,000 on $5,000, which is 100%.
How deep can a losing streak take my account?
With risk r per trade taken from the current balance, n losses leave 1 − (1 − r)^n. Ten losses at 1% is a 9.56% drawdown, at 2% it is 18.29% and at 5% it is 40.13%.
What is a normal drawdown for a gold trader?
It depends on the method and the risk per trade, so there is no single normal figure. What you can control is how far a realistic losing streak takes you: run your own risk and win rate through this calculator and the expectancy calculator.
Is fixed-percentage risk better than fixed-dollar risk?
Fixed-percentage risk shrinks positions as the account falls, so the same streak causes a slightly smaller drawdown (9.56% instead of 10% for ten losses at 1%) but recovery is slower. Fixed-dollar risk keeps size constant, which recovers faster but can never reduce risk in a long streak.
How many winning trades does it take to recover?
Divide ln(1 ÷ (1 − drawdown)) by ln(1 + risk × average R) and round up. A 20% drawdown at 1% risk with 2R winners needs 12 winners in a row, before counting any losers in between.
Educational tool only. Not financial advice and not a signal. Check your own broker's contract specification, margin rules and costs. Past data does not predict future prices. See our risk disclaimer.