How Long Deep Drawdowns Take to Recover
Across every published replay, we isolated each historical window whose peak-to-trough drawdown reached at least 20% (1,716 windows) and measured how many days it took for the trough close to reclaim the prior peak.
1,716
Deep-drawdown windows (≥20%)
28
Median recovery days (recovered)
31.6
Mean recovery days (recovered)
90%
Windows end before recovery
Key findings
- ① Most replay windows (90%) end before the pre-crash peak is reclaimed — because the windows are sliced around the crisis itself. Recovery, in other words, usually needs a longer lens than the event.
- ② Among the 175 windows that did recover within their bounds, the median was 28 trading days and the mean 31.6 — sharp V-shaped recoveries are the minority.
- ③ The deepest drawdown in the dataset is WTI crude in 2020, where settlement prices turned negative — a reminder that drawdown percentages behave differently in markets where prices can go below zero.
The 30 deepest drawdown windows
Download dataset CSV (60 deepest windows)Scope and caveats
- ① The universe is all published replays with peak-to-trough drawdowns of 20% or worse (1,716 windows); 175 recovered within their window and 1541 are censored — unrecovered, and never counted as zero-day recoveries.
- ② Recovery days counts calendar days from the trough close to the first close at or above the prior peak. Because source timestamps are inconsistent across the archive, we publish only relative durations and window starts — no intra-window dates.
- ③ Nothing here is investment advice; replays are simulated-capital educational scenarios (see the Risk Disclaimer).