45% seam to be very high. As a general rule equity draw downs should be keep't within maximum 20% No accredited or institutional investor would invest capital with a CTA/HF that regularly goes though >20% drawdowns.
1. Each individual trading loss should be from a disciplined stop where you planned to "risk a small amount for the potential, in your vision, of a significantly larger gain". IOW... if you suffer a big drawdown... it should be like being "nibbled to death by ducks". Bad as that can be, if you're losing capital in big chunks... you're doing it wrong. 2. If you incur a cumulative large drawdown, it's because either (1) you didn't limit your losses on individual trades, (2) your directional bias was wrong, and you repeated the same mistake again and again or (3) your entire approach to trading is wrong and needs refinement. ("Huskeez"... you have Siberian Husky dogs?)