Rules by Firm
The #1 reason traders blow funded accounts: they didn't read the rules carefully. Every major rule — documented.
Trailing DD follows your peak equity upward. Starting at $100K with 6% trailing: floor is $94K. Grow to $110K? Floor moves to $103,400 — your safety net shrinks in absolute dollar terms. EOD trailing (Apex, Topstep) calculates from end-of-day balance, not intraday high — more favourable for volatile days.
Fixed DD is calculated from initial balance and never changes. $100K with 10% fixed: floor is always $90,000, even if your account grows to $200K. FTMO and OneFunded use fixed drawdowns — more favourable for profitable traders since the floor stays constant.
Firms like Apex have no daily loss limit — only the max drawdown applies. This is a significant advantage. You can have a large losing day without getting cut off as long as you stay above the trailing floor. Most forex prop firms impose a 4–5% daily limit on top of the max DD.
Some firms enforce a consistency rule: no single trading day can represent more than 30–50% of total profits. Prevents lucky single-day passes. Avoid aggressive trading on NFP and FOMC days if your firm has this rule.