6.1% or 276%? The same drawdown, two very different stories

I loaded 306 backtest reports, all the public sets of one EA, into Strategy Ledger Pro's Backtest Analyzer, on one shared $100,000 account, at the lots each test used. The result over 2,424 days:

- +7,694% net, profit factor 1.42

- recovery factor 27.87, annualised return +92.7%

- 170,127 trades, 270 strategies

Impressive. But one card deserves a closer look:

MAX DRAWDOWN: $276,064.08, 6.1% of peak

The Backtest Analyzer with all 306 reports on one $100,000 account. MAX DRAWDOWN (top) and MONTE CARLO 95% (in the detail grid) tell two different stories about the same losing stretch. EA name blurred.

Both numbers describe the same losing stretch. Measured against the balance at its peak, about $4.5 million at the time, it was 6.1%. Measured against the $100,000 the account started with, it was 276%: almost three times the starting balance.

Which one is true? Both. Which one matters depends on a single question.

Do your lots grow with the account?

If they do (compounding), drawdowns grow and shrink with the balance. A 6.1% stretch is 6.1% whenever it happens: early on, it would have cost about $6,000 instead of $276,000. Here the percentage is the honest number. But the money is real too: a $276,000 swing in one stretch is a very different experience from the one a backtest's percentages suggest.

If your lots are fixed, the money is the honest number. A losing stretch of $276,000 doesn't care when it arrives. In month two, on a $100,000 account, it would have taken the account to zero, almost three times over. The 6.1% only looked small because the stretch came late, after years of profit.

Combining backtests adds a third twist: each report was sized for its own account. Stacking 306 of them onto one account stacks their exposure too. Before trusting a combined result, check how much it trades at once, not just what it earned.

What Monte Carlo adds

The panel reshuffles the order of the trades thousands of times. In 95% of those reorderings, the worst drawdown stays within $157,953.63. The real one, $276,064.08, went far past it.

That's not bad luck in the ordinary sense. It means the losses arrived together. The verdict explains why: the sets are counted as separate evidence, but they trade alike, so when one has a bad stretch, many do. Similar strategies don't spread risk; they stack it.

The lesson: when you run many similar strategies, plan for the drawdown they actually produced together, not the one a model of independent trades suggests.

How to check this on your own backtests

- The MAX DRAWDOWN card shows the drawdown in money and as a % of peak. Compare the money figure with your starting balance, not just the percentage.

- Compare it with MONTE CARLO 95% in the EA's detail. If the real drawdown is beyond it, your losses cluster.

- Open CORRELATION to see which of your strategies move together.

- GAVE BACK shows the same drawdown against the peak profit, without the starting balance.

What's next

The next update brings What-if: replay every strategy at fixed lots or at lots per balance step, from a starting balance you choose. That answers this article's question directly: would this stretch have survived if it had come in month two?

The figures above are simulated backtests at the tested lots, with the reports' own commission and swap but no live slippage. They show how the panel reads drawdowns, not how the EA would perform live.

Strategy Ledger Pro: https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/192540

Strategy Ledger (free): https://www.mql5.com/en/market/product/187239