Entering text into the input field will update the search result below

Investment Gain/Loss Asymmetry

Jul. 11, 2013 10:59 AM ET
solarv profile picture
solarv's Blog
3 Followers
Please Note: Blog posts are not selected, edited or screened by Seeking Alpha editors.

The charts below show why you should lose as little as possible during the course of your investing life. Wallstreet will never tell you this - investment loss/gain asymmetry. Every 1% loss you incur, you will need more than 1% gain to recoup your loss.

To recoup a 25% loss, a 33% gain is required.

To recoup a 50% loss, a 100% gain is required.

Same goes to the opposite scenario.

To wipe out a 50% gain, only a 33% loss is required.

To wipe out a 100% gain, only a 50% loss is required.

Remember life is always unfair, same goes to investment. Risk management is an important component of one's investing life. Value investing is known as one of the most successful investing strategies in the history. Why? That's because an experienced value investor truly understands the concept of margin of safety. The power of compounding effect works beautifully only when the losses are minimized during the course of one's investing life.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.

Recommended For You

To ensure this doesn’t happen in the future, please enable Javascript and cookies in your browser.
Is this happening to you frequently? Please report it on our feedback forum.
If you have an ad-blocker enabled you may be blocked from proceeding. Please disable your ad-blocker and refresh.