Trailing drawdown, explained properly
More funded accounts die to a misunderstood drawdown rule than to bad trading. The confusing part is that two firms can both say "trailing drawdown" and mean genuinely different things.
If you have ever closed a green day and come back the next morning to find your buffer smaller than you expected, this is why. Trailing drawdown is not a single rule. It is a family of rules, and the two most common versions punish opposite mistakes.
The one-sentence version
A trailing drawdown is a floor underneath your account that moves up when you make money and never moves back down. Touch it and the account is gone.
Everything else — every argument you have ever seen about this — is about one question: what does "make money" mean? Your highest balance during the day, or the balance you finished the day with?
The two kinds
| Intraday-peak trailing | End-of-day trailing | |
|---|---|---|
| Follows | The highest your balance touched at any moment, including open unrealised profit | Your closed balance when the session ends |
| Used by | Apex Trader Funding (full accounts) | Topstep |
| Punishes | Letting winners run and giving profit back | Nothing intraday — you can round-trip a gain for free |
| The trap | An unrealised spike you never banked permanently raises your floor | People assume they are safe intraday. They are not — a breach still liquidates live. |
Why this matters more than it sounds
Under intraday-peak trailing, profit you never actually received still counts against you forever. If your 50K Apex account spikes to $50,875 mid-trade and you close the day at $50,100, your threshold is calculated from $50,875, not $50,100. Apex states this directly: the threshold is based on the highest live value during trades, not on closed trade values.
Under end-of-day trailing, that same round trip costs you nothing. Topstep recalculates your limit from where you finish.
A worked example
Same trader. Same three days. Two firms. $50,000 starting balance.
Day 1: up $900 at the peak, closes +$300. Day 2: flat, but touches +$1,400 unrealised before giving it back. Day 3: down $200.
| Apex 50K (intraday peak, $2,500) | Topstep 50K (end of day, $2,000) | |
|---|---|---|
| Start | Floor $47,500 | Floor $48,000 |
| After day 1 | Peak $50,900 → floor $48,400 | Close $50,300 → floor $48,300 |
| After day 2 | Peak $51,700 → floor $49,200 | Close $50,300 → floor $48,300 |
| After day 3 | Balance $50,100, floor $49,200 → $900 of room | Balance $50,100, floor $48,300 → $1,800 of room |
The point
Identical trading. Twice the survivable room at one firm. The Apex trader lost $800 of buffer to a spike on a flat day — profit that never landed in the account.
When does it stop trailing?
This is the part almost nobody gets right, and it is the good news.
Apex
On full accounts the threshold stops moving once your unrealised balance exceeds the plan's starting balance by the drawdown amount plus $100. On a 50K account that means the floor freezes at $50,100 once you are up enough — from then on you can never lose the account while you are above your starting balance.
Two exceptions worth knowing, because they are platform-dependent: during an evaluation, Rithmic accounts stop trailing once the threshold reaches the profit target, whereas Tradovate accounts keep trailing and do not stop. Static accounts never trail at all.
Topstep
The maximum loss limit rises as your balance grows, never moves down, and locks permanently once it reaches your starting balance. On a 50K account it begins at $48,000 and locks at $50,000 — which happens when your balance reaches $52,000. After that, your original starting balance is a hard floor you cannot fall through.
Current drawdown amounts
| Account | Apex (full) | Topstep |
|---|---|---|
| 25K | $1,500 | — |
| 50K | $2,500 | $2,000 |
| 75K | $2,750 | — |
| 100K | $3,000 | $3,000 |
| 150K | $5,000 | $4,500 |
| 250K | $6,500 | — |
| 300K | $7,500 | — |
Verify against your own dashboard before trading off these. Prop firm rules change more often than any article gets updated, including this one.
The three mistakes that actually blow accounts
1. Assuming end-of-day trailing means you are safe intraday
It does not. Topstep's limit is recalculated at the end of the day, but it is monitored in real time — and unrealised losses count. If you touch the limit at 11am you are liquidated at 11am, however the day would have finished. End-of-day trailing changes how your floor moves. It does not give you an intraday free pass.
2. Not knowing which platform your account runs on
Most prop firms do not clear their own trades — they sit on top of Rithmic, Tradovate or NinjaTrader. On Apex the trailing behaviour during evaluation differs between Rithmic and Tradovate accounts, and so does your commission rate ($1.55/side on NQ via Tradovate versus $1.99 via Rithmic). Traders routinely do not know which one they are on. Your firm dashboard will tell you.
3. Tracking the floor in your head
The number that matters is not your P&L. It is the distance between your current balance and a floor that moved while you were not looking — possibly on a day you did not make any money. Almost nobody can hold that number accurately across a week of trading, and the moment it matters most is the moment you are least able to compute it.
Worth knowing
Commission comes out before any of this. On a standard-size contract at a typical prop rate, ten round turns a day for a month is roughly $620 in commission — often larger than a trader's worst single losing day, and it counts against your drawdown like any other loss. Published rates by firm and platform are in our commission fee guide.
The practical takeaway
- Find out whether your firm trails on intraday peak or end-of-day close. It changes whether taking profit off the table protects you or costs you.
- Find out which platform your account runs on. It affects both your drawdown behaviour and what you pay per contract.
- Work out the balance at which your floor locks, and treat reaching it as a real milestone. On Apex 50K that is roughly $52,600; on Topstep 50K it is $52,000. Past that point the account stops being fragile.
- Track the distance to the floor as a live number, not a feeling.
Fillbook tracks the floor for you
A trading journal built for funded futures accounts. It watches your distance to the trailing floor, your daily loss limit, the consistency rule and sizing drift as live checks — and fills in commissions automatically per firm and platform when you import from Tradovate, NinjaTrader or TopstepX.
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