Mad Money Machine

Getting Back to Even

 Here’s a handy table (for your printing pleasure) that shows what percentage gain you need to get on your investments to get back to where you were before a certain percentage loss. So for example, the S&P 500 index is down about 40% year to date. Looking down the table, you’ll see that we’d need a gain of 66.7% to get back to where it was at the start of the year.

Table of What It Takes   to Get Back to Even
If your loss was:		You will need a gain of:
5.0%		5.3%
10.0%		11.1%
15.0%		17.6%
20.0%		25.0%
25.0%		33.3%
30.0%		42.9%
35.0%		53.8%
40.0%		66.7%
45.0%		81.8%
50.0%		100.0%
55.0%		122.2%
60.0%		150.0%
65.0%		185.7%
66.6%		200.0%
70.0%		233.3%
75.0%		300.0%
80.0%		400.0%
85.0%		566.7%
90.0%		900.0%
95.0%		1900.0%
97.0%		3233.3%
98.0%		4900.0%
99.0%		9900.0%
100.0%		OOPS!

For Fannie Mae (FNM) you’d need a gain of 7839%. It closed at 39.98 on 31 Dec and now trades at about 0.51.