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The Mathematics of Drawdown

Drawdown is the percentage decline from a previous equity peak. Its most important property is asymmetry: the percentage gain required to recover is larger than the percentage loss that created the drawdown. If an account falls from 10,000to10,000 to 8,000, the loss is 20%. Returning from 8,000to8,000 to 10,000 requires a 25% gain. Required recovery = Drawdown / (1 − Drawdown) This asymmetry is one reason high risk per trade can damage an account even when the underlying strategy remains unchanged.