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The part nobody advertises

The Worst of It

Every number on this page is the bad kind. The deepest hole the strategy has dug, the year it lost money, the longest run of losing trades, and - the one that actually breaks people - how long it stayed underwater before it made a new high.

If you are deciding whether to trade this, these are the figures that matter. The good months are on the stats page and they are not what will make you quit - though the best of it is on its own page, built from this same export, so you can read both.

Read that second box again. The 2024 drawdown took 122 days to fall and did not make a new high for 359 days - just under a year. Nothing was broken. The strategy traded exactly as designed the whole time. That is simply what a drawdown is, and anyone who cannot sit through one should not trade this or anything like it.

See every leg that closed between 2024-04-12 and 2024-08-12

That list sums to slightly less than -10,115p: the drawdown is measured trade by trade from the exact peak to the exact trough, while the list is bounded by calendar day, so it also includes the legs that closed on the peak day after the peak and on the trough day after the trough.

What the worst drawdown costs

10,115 pips at your lot size, and the account you would need for that to cost you 25% rather than everything. Gold pays $10 per pip per 1.00 lot.

Lot sizeWorst drawdown costsAccount to survive it at −25%
0.01$1,012$4,046
0.05$5,058$20,230
0.10$10,115$40,460
0.25$25,288$101,150
0.50$50,575$202,300
1.00$101,150$404,600

This is the worst drawdown on record, not a ceiling. The next one can be worse - fourteen years is a long sample, not every possible market.

Where the losses actually come from

The same four categories as the profit breakdown, with the sign flipped - 156,015.3 pips of gross loss across 412 losing legs. The two do not line up the way you would guess.

The five worst single legs in fourteen years
BE1 runner · May 4, 2026-895.5p
BE1 runner · Mar 20, 2026-813.8p
BE1 runner · Mar 22, 2026-789.7p
BE1 runner · Feb 18, 2026-783.8p
BE1 runner · Feb 23, 2026-766p

All five are runners, and all five are 2026. The runner takes 26.7% of the profit and 33.9% of the loss - that is what a deliberately wide 750-pip stop buys you: fewer losers, bigger ones, and the winners it lets run. The stop was chosen by sweeping 500 / 650 / 700 / 750 / 800, not guessed.

Every year, good and bad

3 of 15 years finished negative, and 35 of 119 months - 29% of them. Roughly one month in three loses money. Strip out the partial years and the exceptional 2025-26 trend and a normal year is +2,203p (median of 12), with the middle half landing between +1,159p and +5,595p - the full breakdown is here.

2012
+3,180.9p
2013
+5,744.5p
2014
+2,393.9p
2015
+1,657.7p
2016
-338.3p
2017
-2,696.1p
2018
+1,973.6p
2019
+2,469.6p
2020
+17,355.9p
2021
+6,131.5p
2022
+5,544.5p
2023
+2,011.9p
2024
-3,481.9p
2025
+23,930.1p
2026
+84,604.1p

The tallest bar is an exceptional trending year in gold, not a normal one, and the first and current years are partial. Judge the strategy by the middle of the pack: over 2013 - 2024 a typical year landed between +1,159p and +5,595p, median +2,203p.

2024, month by month

The worst year in full, with the running total beside each month - the shape of it matters more than the total. Its best month still made +2,102.2p and its worst lost -2,920.8p, and it still finished the year down -3,481.9p. Tap a month for the trades behind it.

MonthPipsRunning
February-1,561.3p-1,561.3p
March+2,102.2p+540.9p
April+842.1p+1,383p
May-2,920.8p-1,537.8p
June-949.8p-2,487.6p
July-1,041.1p-3,528.7p
August-1,626.7p-5,155.4p
September+2,003.4p-3,152p
October+677.8p-2,474.2p
November+247.2p-2,227p
December-1,254.9p-3,481.9p

Months with no closed trades do not appear - the table starts at the first month that traded.

The eight worst months

updates itself

Recomputed from the full record every time this page loads, so a new worst month appears here the moment it closes - nobody has to remember to update it. August 2026 is still running (+7,821.6p so far) and is not eligible until it finishes.

The worst month of every year

Even the strongest years contain one. Tap any month to see the individual trades behind it.

YearYear totalIts worst monthThat month
2026+84,604.1pJuly+2,372.6p
2025+23,930.1pJuly-4,747.3p
2024-3,481.9pMay-2,920.8p
2023+2,011.9pSeptember-1,572.4p
2022+5,544.5pJanuary-1,329p
2021+6,131.5pSeptember-1,561.5p
2020+17,355.9pMay+5p
2019+2,469.6pNovember-1,322p
2018+1,973.6pMarch-102.7p
2017-2,696.1pDecember-1,666.2p
2016-338.3pFebruary-2,902.9p
2015+1,657.7pFebruary-912p
2014+2,393.9pOctober-613.4p
2013+5,744.5pSeptember-2,615.6p
2012+3,180.9pNovember-1,681.2p

Computed live from the same merged record as everything else on this page. The month currently in progress is excluded until it closes.

Two things that make these numbers worse, not better

  1. This is a backtest. It is a simulation of what the current rules would have done on historical price data, not a record of money that was made. Live results differ: real spreads, real slippage, real gaps, and a real person deciding whether to keep going in month nine of a drawdown.
  2. The backtest understates losses on fast candles. Recovery orders rest at the broker as pending limits, so they fill on live ticks. The tester only checks price once per candle. When price sweeps through a recovery level and the stop inside the same candle, the broker fills that leg and takes the loss while the tester skips it entirely - on the 14 Jan 2026 replay that was a real −142 pips the backtest never recorded. It is a deliberate design choice (a resting limit gets you a better fill than a market order), and the cost of it is that the published pip totals are slightly flattering.
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The rest of the record

These are one record split into views. Any single one of them, read alone, is misleading.

Source. v67 export e6047, PEPPERSTONE XAU/USD, 2012-08-22 to 2026-08-24 - 979 closed legs, 150,481.9 net pips. Every figure on this page is computed from that export’s own trade list (entry price, exit price, direction), the same file every other number on this site comes from.

Drawdown is measured in pips at constant position size, peak to trough on closed trades. Dollar figures assume $10 per pip per 1.00 lot and do not include swap or commission. Trading gold can lose you money, including all of it - see the full risk disclosure.

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