Your evaluation will probably fail on the daily loss limit, not the target
Traders shopping for a prop firm compare profit targets. Traders who have actually failed an evaluation talk about the daily loss limit.
There is a reason for that gap, and it comes down to three words in our rulebook: equity based.
Equity, not balance
Your balance only changes when you close a trade. Your equity is your balance plus the floating profit or loss on everything still open.
Our daily and overall loss limits are measured on equity. So:
You can breach a limit, and fail the account, without closing a single position.
A trade that is 400 pips against you but that you are "sure will come back" is already counted. The rule does not wait to see whether you were right.
This is the single most common way an evaluation is lost by accident, and it is almost always a surprise rather than a decision.
What the limit is worth in cash
On a $50,000 account:
| Model | Daily limit | In cash |
|---|---|---|
| Two-Step | 5% | $2,500 |
| One-Step | 3% | $1,500 |
| Instant Funding | 3% | $1,500 |
Now put that next to position sizing. Suppose you risk 1% of the account per trade — $500 on a $50,000 account, which most people would call conservative.
- On Two-Step, five losing trades in a day and you are at the limit.
- On One-Step or Instant Funding, three.
Three losing trades is not a catastrophe. It is a Tuesday. If your risk per trade is set without reference to the daily limit, a perfectly ordinary run of losses ends the account.
The arithmetic nobody does before starting
Work backwards instead. Decide how many losing trades in a row you want to survive, then size to that.
Risk per trade = daily loss limit ÷ number of losses you want to survive
Wanting to survive six losers on a $50,000 One-Step account: $2,500 ÷ 6 = $416 per trade, or 0.83% of the account.
That will feel small. That is the point. The traders who pass are usually not the ones with the best entries — they are the ones still trading on day nine.
Three habits that prevent it
Set a daily stop below the limit. If the rule is $2,500, stop at $1,700. The rule is a cliff edge; your own stop should be the fence in front of it.
Count floating losses as real. Before you open another position, ask what your equity is, not your balance. An open drawdown plus a fresh loss is how a limit gets breached in a single click.
Know when the day rolls over. A daily limit resets on a server-day boundary, not when you go to bed. Holding a losing position across that boundary does not reset anything about the position — it only changes which day the next loss counts against.
And the overall limit sits behind it
The daily limit is the one you hit first. The overall limit is the one that ends things.
On the evaluation-route models the overall limit is static — calculated once from your starting balance and never moved, no matter how much profit you make. On Instant Funding it trails your closed balance upward until it reaches your starting balance, then locks there permanently.
The gap between the two limits is what decides how many bad days you get, and it is tighter than most people assume. All three forex & CFD plans allow 5% in a day. Behind that sits 6% in total on One-Step, 7% on Two-Step and 8% on Instant Funding — so on a $10,000 One-Step account it is $500 daily against $600 total. Two days at the limit is not survivable on any of them, and on One-Step barely one and a half is.
Neither is a trick. Both are published before you pay, which is rather the point. The full forex & CFD rules are here, and the calculator will show you every limit in cash for any account size before you commit.
Educational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment or trading advice. Trading leveraged products carries a high level of risk and can result in the loss of all of your capital.