Compounding calculator
What repeating a monthly rate does to an amount, in whichever direction you point it. The rate is a hypothetical you typed - markets pay nobody a steady percentage - and the cost of climbing out of a fall is stated under every table.
What the table shows
Compounding means each month's change is calculated on the previous month's value, not the starting amount. Pointed upward, the monthly gains grow as the base grows; pointed downward at the same rate, the losses shrink in size while the hole deepens - which is why the two directions never mirror each other.
That asymmetry is the line under the table, and it stays there in both directions. A 50% fall needs a 100% gain to return to break even; a 30% fall needs 43%. Flip the toggle to loss before believing any long gain column - real results are a mixture of both directions in an order nobody controls.
Nothing here says any rate is achievable. The table answers one question only: if some rate repeated monthly, what would the arithmetic do.
Worked example
10,000 at a hypothetical 2% per month, twelve months.
- Gaining: 12,682.42, a change of +2,682.42; the twelfth month alone adds +248.67
- Losing at the same rate: 7,847.17, a change of −2,152.83
- The line under the table reads: a 2% fall needs a 2.04% gain to return to 10,000
The unit test suite pins these exact figures.
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