What is a drawdown?
The fall from a portfolio or asset's peak value to its lowest point afterwards, usually stated as a percentage.
If an asset peaks at 100 and falls to 40, that is a 60% drawdown. Recovering from it is harder than it sounds: a 60% fall requires a 150% gain to get back to level.
Why it matters: this asymmetry is the single most useful piece of arithmetic in risk management. It is why avoiding large losses matters more than capturing large gains, and why leverage is dangerous — it deepens drawdowns from which recovery becomes mathematically implausible. Major crypto assets have repeatedly had drawdowns exceeding 70%.
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