Drawdown

A national epidemic that has led to a massive Crayola shortage, and is being driven by crazed parents as desperate as the Queen at Royal Ascot for a competition to race their toddlers in until they’re old enough to go head-to-head in the pee wee football league.

Or...something else completely. "Drawdown" is a term used in the context of both commercial bank loans and securities trading.

A drawdown on a bank loan is a borrowing of a portion of the total amount of the loan. Why, you ask, would only a chunk of the change go to the borrower? Because sometimes banks don’t want to part with a large amount of cash all at once, and at other times, borrowers don’t want to take on a huge debt, but want to know it’s there if they need it. In these situations, the loan functions similarly to a credit card, in that borrowers can access the full amount of the loan if they choose, but generally make and repay charges in smaller amounts.

In the investing world, a drawdown refers to the method used by analysts to record the decline of a security during a specific period of time. Generally, a drawdown refers to the percentage difference between the highest value, or peak, and the lowest value, or trough, of a security in the time frame under review.