Trailing, end-of-day, and static drawdown, worked through with real numbers

Your drawdown is a floor under your account balance. Touch it and the account fails. A static floor never moves. An end-of-day floor moves up only when a session closes at a new high. An intraday floor follows your highest equity in real time, open profit included. A trailing floor that locks stops rising once it reaches the starting balance, and that lock is the most important number in the rule.

The four floors you'll see

Every drawdown starts in the same place: the starting balance minus the drawdown. On a 50K account with a $2,000 drawdown, that's $48,000. What happens next is the whole difference.

• Static. The floor stays at $48,000 forever. Every dollar you make is extra room.
• End-of-day (EOD) trailing. After each session, the floor moves to your best closing balance minus the drawdown. Open profit during the day doesn't count.
• Intraday trailing. The floor moves the moment your equity makes a new high, open profit included. Give back an open gain and the floor stays where the peak put it.
• The lock. On a locking account, once the floor reaches the starting balance (or just above it) it stops. From then on it behaves like a static floor.

One trade sequence, four floors

Here is one hypothetical 50K account, $2,000 drawdown, traded the same way under each rule. Day 1 a trade runs up $1,800 and you exit with $600. Days 2 and 3 are good. Day 4 a losing trade drops you to $50,700, still $700 above where you started.

Static

Static

End-of-day trailing, locks at the starting balance

EOD trailing, locks

Intraday trailing, locks at the starting balance

Intraday, locks

Intraday trailing that never locks

Intraday

Two things the tables show. First, the lock did the heavy lifting: both locking accounts survived Day 4 and the one that never locks did not. An end-of-day floor with no lock fails here too, because the Day 3 close moves it to $51,200 and the Day 4 low is $50,700. Second, intraday trailing punishes giving back open profit. If Day 2 had opened with a $1,000 drop to $49,600, the intraday account would have failed (floor $49,800), while the end-of-day account still had $1,000 of room.

The lock: where the floor stops

The lock point is the starting balance or just above it. At Topstep, Take Profit Trader, Alpha Futures, TradeDay, Earn2Trade, FundedNext Futures, DayTraders.com, and FTMO Futures, at least one program locks the floor at the starting balance. At Tradeify, Lucid Trading, Bulenox, Elite Trader Funding, FundedNext Futures, and Top One Futures, at least one program locks it at the starting balance plus $100 ($50,100 on a 50K). That extra $100 means you need $2,100 of profit, not $2,000, before the floor stops chasing you. Until then, the account is at its most fragile.

Some floors only lock once you're funded

At 9 firms (Apex Trader Funding, MyFundedFutures, Tradeify, Bulenox, Elite Trader Funding, Funded Futures Network, Funded Futures Family, Phidias Propfirm, and DayTraders.com), at least one evaluation's trailing floor has no lock during the evaluation. In several of them, the lock arrives only after you pass. Tradeify's Growth and Select evaluations don't lock, but the funded account locks at the starting balance plus $100 once the end-of-day balance reaches the starting balance plus the drawdown plus $100 ($52,100 on a 50K), or on your first payout request. Bulenox doesn't lock during Qualification; the Master Account does. Funded Futures Network trails in the funded account until the buffer is built, then goes static at the starting balance plus $100. At MyFundedFutures, the Pro funded account trails until the first approved payout, then locks. Apex Trader Funding's evaluation floor stops trailing at the profit-target balance on Rithmic and WealthCharts but trails indefinitely on Tradovate.

End-of-day floors still end accounts mid-session

"End-of-day" describes when the floor moves, not when it's checked. The firms that spell it out check the current floor against live equity all day. Topstep monitors its end-of-day floor intraday on realized plus unrealized P&L. Tradeify enforces it in real time on net liquidation value. At Take Profit Trader, touching the floor intraday, realized or unrealized, liquidates the account. Alpha Futures and TradeDay say the same. So an open trade that dips through the floor at 10 AM fails the account, even if it would have closed green.

The practical difference is overnight: with an end-of-day floor, the level you're defending is fixed for the whole session and you know it before the open. With an intraday floor, it can rise under you with every new equity high.

Which firms use which drawdown

Each firm's glyphs below cover every program it sells, most forgiving first. The ring marks a floor that locks. For each account size's exact floor and lock, see the programs table or put two firms side by side in compare.

Intraday floors that don't lock during the evaluation show up at Apex Trader Funding, Bulenox, Elite Trader Funding, Funded Futures Family, and DayTraders.com. If you trade with wide stops or let winners breathe, those are the programs to read twice.

Trading inside a trailing floor

1. Know your lock number. On a 50K with a $2,000 drawdown that locks at the starting balance, the account has to reach $52,000 before the floor stops: at a session close for end-of-day floors, at any moment for intraday ones. Until then, treat the account as fragile.
2. On intraday floors, manage open profit. Every new equity high raises the floor. Scaling out or trailing your stop keeps a round-tripped winner from costing you room.
3. Size to the room you have today, not the drawdown on the box. In the example, the intraday account had $800 of room after Day 1. A stop that risks more than that is a stop that can fail the account.
4. Mind the daily limit too. A daily loss limit and a trailing floor are separate rules, and whichever is closer binds. See daily loss limits explained.
5. Put your own floor inside theirs. A personal stop a few hundred dollars above the firm's floor fires first, while you still have an account.

That last step can be automated. CrossTrade's Account Manager (from our publisher) can set an account floor or a trailing drawdown guard on each account, placed inside the firm's number as a buffer, and flatten the account when it's hit. It's a risk tool, not a guarantee: flattens are market orders and can slip, and on NinjaTrader 8 it only acts while NinjaTrader and the XT Add-On are running and connected. It can't connect at Topstep, Alpha Futures, and DayTraders.com. Firms that restrict third-party tools may not allow it either, so check your firm's rules first. The how-it-works page covers the limits.

For where the drawdown fits in the whole process, see how a futures prop firm evaluation works. For the rule that caps your best day instead of your worst, see consistency rules explained.

Questions traders ask

Prop firm rules change often. Figures here were checked against each firm's own site on the date shown on its firm page; confirm the current terms with the firm before you buy. Nothing here is financial advice.