What's your strategy for drawdown recovery?

Recovering a drawdown by trading harder is how accounts die; recovering by trading smaller and slower is how they survive. The recovery plan should exist before the drawdown does.

What's your strategy for drawdown recovery? — drawdown and recovery diagram
An equity curve during a drawdown and its recovery

What's yours?

  • how you trade during the drawdown
  • the size and rule changes you make
  • how you know recovery is working
What's your strategy for drawdown recovery? — moving average crossover diagram
A fast moving average crossing a slower one

The drawdown guide explains why slower recovery is faster in the end.

Background: Drawdown and recovery: why a 50% loss needs a 100% gain

Losses and gains aren't symmetrical. See how much you need to recover from a drawdown, what losing streaks do at different risk levels and how to set limits.

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

100%. The gain needed is the loss divided by one minus the loss, so larger drawdowns need disproportionately larger gains.

What is maximum drawdown?

The largest fall in account value from a peak to a later low, before a new peak is reached, usually expressed as a percentage.

Read the full guide

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