When does a trailing drawdown stop trailing? The floor-lock rules, firm by firm
Two accounts can carry the same $2,000 trailing drawdown and face different worst cases, because the published fact that decides everything is where the floor stops. Firms publish that answer three different ways (the floor locks at the starting balance, locks a fixed amount above it, or never stops) and some do not publish it at all. Until you know which cell your plan sits in, you cannot say how much room a winning week actually bought you.
In this guide
The short answer
Start here
A trailing floor stops only where the firm publishes a lock, and the published behaviors are three: it locks at the starting balance, locks $100 above it, or trails for the life of the account. Find your plan and phase in the snapshot below, then compute your floor as best watermark minus the published distance, capped at the lock level. If your cell reads not published, model the floor as trailing forever until the firm's own page states a lock.
What matters
- Compute your floor tonight (best settled watermark minus the published distance, capped at the lock level) and size tomorrow inside the room that number leaves.
- Treat a start + $100 lock as $100 less room for the life of the account: it breaches while the account still shows $100 of profit.
- Count funded buffer as extractable only after you have watched your floor hold still through a close that should have moved it.
- Model any not-published cell as trailing forever until the firm's own page states a lock.
1
The ratchet: best watermark minus published distance, up only
A trailing drawdown is a loss line that follows your best mark upward. The firm computes a floor (the equity level where the account ends) as your watermark minus the published distance. On a hypothetical $50,000 account with a $2,000 distance, the floor opens at $48,000; a best settled close of $51,300 drags it to $49,300, and it never comes back down.
Which watermark you trail is half the rule. End-of-day plans ratchet from the best settled daily close, so an intraday spike that fades before the close moves nothing; intraday plans ratchet from the live peak including open profit, which can tighten the floor mid-trade. Enforcement is a separate fact from ratcheting: on six of the eight firms in the snapshot below, official pages state the floor is enforced live against open equity even when it only moves at the close, so a dip through the line can end the account intraday.
An uncapped ratchet means your room, current equity minus the floor, can never exceed the published distance, however much profit you build. Every new high converts the profit beneath it into floor. The lock is the published point where that conversion stops, and it is the only thing that lets room on this hypothetical account ever grow past $2,000.
2
Three published behaviors, and the honest fourth state
Locks at the starting balance: the floor stops the moment it climbs to the balance you started with. On the worked account that happens when the watermark reaches $52,000, because $52,000 minus the $2,000 distance equals the $50,000 start. From then on every new high adds room: at a $53,500 best close the floor still reads $50,000, leaving $3,500 of room.
Locks $100 above the starting balance: same mechanism, but the floor rests at $50,100 and finishes locking at a $52,100 watermark. The offset is a real $100 of room you never get back (the account breaches while still showing $100 of profit) so a start + $100 lock gives you permanently less survivable giveback than a lock at the start line, and the two must never be rounded into one rule.
Trails for the life of the account: at least one firm in the snapshot publishes this outright for its evaluations, the firm's own page states the evaluation floor never locks. There, the $53,500 watermark carries the floor to $51,500 and holds room at $2,000 forever.
Not published is the fourth state, and it is a complete answer. One evaluation cell in the snapshot stays that way because the firm's own pages give a different lock per platform vendor (the same account trails forever on one data feed and locks above the start on another) so any single firm-level sentence would be wrong on somebody's screen. When your cell reads not published, model the floor as trailing forever; that direction understates your room and cannot flatter you.
3
The lock trigger is published less often than the lock level
A lock has two coordinates: where the floor rests, and what event stops it. The level is the well-published half. Two trigger families appear in official help text: a balance event (the lock completes when your watermark reaches start plus distance plus offset, which on the worked account is $52,000 or $52,100) and an account event, where the floor stops after your first payout.
The trigger changes real money. Under the balance trigger, the $53,500 watermark leaves a $50,000 floor and $3,500 of room. Under a first-payout trigger, a trader who has not yet withdrawn is still trailing: the same watermark puts the floor at $51,500 and the room at $2,000, even though the published level says the floor locks at start. At least one firm's own help articles state different triggers on different pages, which is why the snapshot below carries lock levels only and no per-firm trigger.
Your own account can settle what the help center leaves open: after a session where your best settled close rose, read the floor number in your firm dashboard. If the close rose $500 and the floor held still, your lock is in effect; if the floor rose with it, you are still trailing and your room stays capped at the published distance.
4
Phase splits the cell: the evaluation floor and the funded floor are different facts
Every entry in the snapshot is stated per phase, because the clearest firm in it publishes opposite answers on a single page: its evaluation floors never lock, and its funded floors lock $100 above start. Carry the evaluation model into the funded seat there and you will defend the wrong line; carry the funded model into the evaluation and you will count $3,400 of room at the $53,500 watermark where the rule gives you $2,000.
The funded lock is where the lock earns money, because a locked floor turns buffer into survivable giveback. On the worked account, a $2,400 pullback from the $53,500 close lands equity at $51,100, above both locked floors, below the $51,500 trailing one. Survival is what lets buffer become a payout later; under a forever-trailing floor, profit never becomes safety, and the most the account can ever absorb is the $2,000 distance.
So the reading is per phase: check the cell for the account you hold today, and re-check it the day you pass, because passing moves you to a different row of the same table.
Worked example
Assumptions, not a forecastOne account, three floors at the same $53,500 peak
- Labeled hypothetical throughout: $50,000 starting balance, $2,000 published end-of-day trailing distance.
- Best settled close so far: $53,500; current equity: $53,500.
- The same account is computed under each of the three published lock behaviors.
Locks at start: floor $50,000, room $3,500. Locks at start + $100: floor $50,100, room $3,400. Trails forever: floor $53,500 − $2,000 = $51,500, room $2,000. A $2,400 giveback ends only the trailing account: $53,500 − $2,400 = $51,100, which is below the $51,500 trailing floor but above both locked floors.
These are labeled assumptions, not any firm's plan. Real plans differ on the watermark definition (settled close versus live peak), enforcement against open equity, and per-plan lock levels, compute with your own plan's published cells.
Published-term reference
Published floor-lock behavior by firm and phase
Each entry is the firm's own published cell for its standard plan, evaluation and funded shown separately; where no official page states the lock, the entry stays not published.
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Alpha Futures
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor stops at the starting balance; once funded the floor stops at the starting balance.
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Apex Trader Funding
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation no lock behaviour is published for this phase; once funded the floor stops $100 above the starting balance.
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FundedNext
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor stops at the starting balance; once funded the floor stops at the starting balance.
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Lucid Trading
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor stops $100 above the starting balance; once funded the floor stops $100 above the starting balance.
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MyFundedFutures
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor stops $100 above the starting balance; once funded the floor stops $100 above the starting balance.
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Take Profit Trader
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor stops at the starting balance; once funded the floor stops at the starting balance.
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Topstep
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor stops at the starting balance; once funded the floor stops at the starting balance.
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Tradeify
RecordedStandard-plan record: in the evaluation the floor keeps ratcheting for the life of the account; once funded the floor stops $100 above the starting balance.
Reference data comes from firms’ published terms. Structured rule sheet checked 2026-06-23. Terms change. Confirm the current plan and phase at the firm.
Tool tutorial
Compute your floor, then let Simulator price the lock
- 1
Collect three published numbers for your plan: starting balance, trailing distance, and your phase's lock cell from the snapshot below, start, start + $100, trails forever, or not published.
- 2
Compute tonight's floor by hand: best settled watermark minus the distance, capped at the lock level if your cell locks. Your room is current equity minus that floor.
- 3
Decide size from the room: if the room is less than your stop distance times your contract count, cut contracts before the open. The floor does not care that the loss came from one trade.
- 4
Open Simulator on the firm, plan and phase you actually hold; it applies that phase's sourced lock cell and models a not-published cell as trailing forever. Run the evaluation and funded phases on the same inputs and read the spread between them as the cost of carrying the wrong phase's floor.
- 5
If your cell reads not published, keep the trailing-forever number as your operating room until the firm's own page states a lock.
Model the floor your plan actually published
Simulator runs modeled paths against the sourced floor-lock cell for the firm, plan and phase you pick (start, start + $100, or trailing) from the balance, distance and phase you confirm.
Pro required. Where a firm's lock is not published, Simulator refuses to guess: it models the floor as trailing forever, the direction that understates your room.
Evidence boundary
What NANO can and cannot know
The snapshot models the standard plan our data encodes for each firm; lock levels can differ across plans at the same firm, and one evaluation cell stays not published because the firm's own pages give a different lock per platform vendor. Lock triggers are under-published across the industry, and firms edit help pages without notice, so a cell can go stale between reads. Each entry carries its source. NANO computes from published rules and the inputs you confirm; it cannot see a rule a firm has not written down.
Common questions
- Does a trailing drawdown ever stop trailing?
- At some firms, yes. The published floor stops at the starting balance or $100 above it; at least one firm publishes that its evaluation floor never stops, and some publish nothing. The snapshot above carries each firm's own cell per phase, with unknowns marked not published.
- What does "drawdown locks at starting balance" mean?
- It means the loss line stops rising once it climbs to the balance you started with, so after the lock the worst case is the account ending at exactly break-even. Until your watermark reaches start plus the published distance, the floor is still below start and still trailing.
- Does the drawdown lock after my first payout?
- That is the trigger question, and it is the least consistently published fact in this topic: some plans tie the lock to a balance event, others to the first payout, and at least one firm's own pages give different answers on different articles, so we deliberately state no per-firm trigger until a firm's pages agree with themselves. Verify on your own account instead: if your best settled close rises and the floor readout holds still, your lock is in effect.
- Is a lock at start + $100 worse than a lock at the starting balance?
- It is $100 less room: the floor rests $100 above your start line, so the breach fires while the account still shows $100 of profit. Treat the offset as a permanent $100 of buffer you must defend for the life of the account.