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.
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