When evaluating your trading strategy and consistency during our Challenge, daily and total drawdown are essential requirements. By analyzing these criteria, our system can determine your trading strategy and consistency level.
The daily drawdown:
Traders can have a maximum daily drawdown of 5% from their initial starting equity (including all floating losses & profits), within a 24-hour period starting at 5 p.m. EST.
For example:
If you have a starting balance of $200,000, 5% of this equals $10,000. This means if your account falls below $190,000 within any given day you are in violation of the “daily drawdown” rule. On the other hand, if you end any given day with a profit let’s say $10,000, your starting capital will increase to $210,000 and your new maximum daily loss will now be $10,500.
How do I calculate the Daily Drawdown?
The Maximum Daily Loss of 5% has a constant value of 5% of your initial account’s size. This means that if a trader has a $100,000 account, their maximum daily loss would be $5,000 (5% of $100,000) at any given time during the challenge.
It’s important to note that the maximum daily loss of 5% is based on the trader’s equity at the end of the day (EOD), which is calculated at 00:00 server time GMT+3 5 pm EST (depending on the changes in daylight savings time). This includes both the realized and unrealized profit and loss (P&L) of the trader’s open positions.
For example, in the case of a $100,000 account, if a trader has lost $4,999 on the first day of trading, their equity at the end of the day would be $95,001. The maximum daily loss threshold would reset the next day, allowing the trader to potentially lose up to $4,999 again without breaching the threshold.
Violation of this rule will result in an automatic failure on your challenge account. The same Daily Drawdown applies to all 3 phases (Evaluation, Verification, and Funded) of every challenge.
Bear in mind that we don’t recommend trading one hour before and after the market rollover, because of bad market conditions caused by low liquidity and high volatility.
The total drawdown
It is defined as the maximum percentage of your initial equity that you are allowed to lose during the entire Challenge. For our Regular Funded Account Challenge, the total drawdown limit is 10%. This means that the overall drawdown must never go below 10% of your starting equity.
For instance: if you start with $100,000, your drawdown limit would be $10,000. If your account balance falls below $90,000 at any point of the Funded Account Challenge, you will be in violation of the total drawdown rule.
To make sure you are trading in favorable market conditions, we recommend not to trade one hour before and after the market rollover. Our drawdown rules were created to help you manage risk and protect your account; following them is crucial to achieving long-term trading success.
Apply them and increase your chances of conquering the market!
