How many losing trades in a row would it take to lose 20% of my account?

How this is calculated

• This tool assumes every trade in the streak risks the same fixed percentage of your current account balance, and that every one of those trades is a full loss at that percentage. Because the risk is a percent of a shrinking balance, each loss compounds on top of the last one, and the account decays faster in dollar terms early in the streak than late in it.
• Number of trades needed equals the smallest whole number of consecutive losses where the compounding balance decline reaches or passes your target drawdown percentage.
• This is a deterministic worst-case walkthrough of a specific losing streak, not a probability estimate. It does not tell you how likely that streak is to happen. For an estimate of streak probability based on your actual win rate, see the losing streak probability tool below.
• Actual trading results are not a fixed percentage loss every time. Slippage, price jumps, and partial stops mean actual consecutive losses can be smaller or larger than this simplified model. Use this as a sobering planning exercise, not a precise forecast.
• The point of this tool is to make position sizing decisions concrete: a smaller risk-per-trade percentage means it takes meaningfully more consecutive losses to reach the same drawdown, which is a core reason many disciplined traders cap risk per trade at 1 to 2 percent of the account.