Max Drawdown is a measure of the largest single drop in value from a peak to a trough, before a new peak is reached, experienced by a portfolio or trading strategy.
It can be used to measure the risk and volatility of a strategy and to evaluate how well it has performed during market downturns. For example, if an investment had a peak value of $100 and then decreased to a trough value of $80, before increasing to a new peak of $120, the maximum drawdown would be 20%.
The lower the maximum drawdown, the less volatile a strategy is, and the better it performs during market downturns.
This metric is often used in conjunction with other performance metrics such as the Sharpe Ratio or the Profit Factor to get a better understanding of the strategy performance.
It's important to note that max drawdown is a historical measure of risk and it might not be an accurate measure of a strategy future risk or performance.
Additionally, it doesn't take into account the time required to recover from a drawdown, so a strategy with a low max drawdown but a long recovery time may not be as desirable as one with a higher drawdown but a shorter recovery period.