You're up $1,500 on a funded evaluation, sitting in an open trade, when a sharp one-minute wick knocks your open equity down $600 before the trade recovers and you close the day green. Did you just fail the account? The honest answer is: it depends entirely on a rule most traders never read closely — whether your firm measures drawdown against your balance at the end of each day, or against your equity in real time, wick included. Same trade, same numbers, two completely different outcomes.
What a drawdown floor actually is
Every prop firm evaluation and funded account has a drawdown limit: a floor that, if your account balance or equity ever touches it, ends the account regardless of what happens afterward. Most modern accounts use a trailing floor rather than a fixed one — it isn't set once at the starting balance, it ratchets up as your account makes new highs, and (on most programs) never moves back down. A $50,000 account with a $2,000 trailing drawdown that grows to $53,000 now has its floor at $51,000, not $48,000 — you've locked in $1,000 of cushion for good.
That part is common across firms. What differs — and what causes almost every "wait, why did I get flagged" moment — is when the floor is measured against your account.
Two different clocks
End-of-day (EOD) trailing drawdown recalculates the floor once per day, using your closing balance — realized P&L only, open positions not included. Whatever your equity does intraday, up or down, is invisible to the rule until the session closes. The floor for tomorrow is set from tonight's close, and that's the only moment that counts.
Intraday trailing drawdown tracks your real-time equity — balance plus the unrealized P&L of whatever's currently open — continuously through the session. The floor can ratchet up the instant you hit a new peak mid-trade, and it can be breached the instant your equity dips below it, even for a single tick, even if the trade goes on to close in profit. There's no waiting for the close to find out — the rule is live the whole time the market is.
A worked example
Take a $50,000 account with a $2,000 trailing drawdown, starting the day with the floor at $49,000 (locked in from a prior high). Two things happen today:
- Mid-morning, an open trade pushes account equity up to a new peak of $51,500.
- Early afternoon, a different open trade dips account equity down to $49,300 before recovering. The day closes at $50,800.
Under an EOD rule, none of the intraday movement matters. The only number that gets checked is the $50,800 close, which is comfortably above the $49,000 floor — no breach, and the floor for tomorrow updates to $48,800 ($50,800 − $2,000).
Under an intraday rule, the story is completely different. The moment equity touched $51,500, the floor ratcheted up in real time to $49,500 ($51,500 − $2,000). The afternoon dip to $49,300 is below that new floor — the account is breached the instant it happens, full stop. It doesn't matter that the trade recovered, or that the day closed green. The evaluation already ended at $49,300.
Same account, same two trades, same closing balance. One rule fails the account hours before the close; the other never even flags it.
Real firms use both — sometimes on the same account type
This isn't a hypothetical edge case; it's an active choice firms make, and it varies enough that you can't assume based on the firm's name alone. Apex Trader Funding is the clearest example of why you have to check per account, not per firm — it lets you choose between Intraday and EOD Trailing drawdown on the same evaluation product, so two traders at the same firm, same account size, can be running under opposite rules. Topstep goes the other way — its Max Loss Limit is end-of-day only, trailing up with the daily close and never back down, so intraday dips genuinely don't count there. And some firms sidestep the question entirely: FTMO's headline max drawdown is static — measured from the initial balance and never trailing at all — which is a third, distinct model worth not confusing with either trailing type. Exact dollar amounts and program details change over time and by account plan; see the current per-firm rules rather than treating any number here as fixed.
Why this should change how you size risk
If your account is on an intraday rule, your stop-loss and open-position risk need to be sized against the live floor, not your end-of-day plan — a stop that feels perfectly reasonable on paper can still get run through by a wick that never shows up in your daily P&L at all. If it's an EOD rule, you have genuinely more room to let a trade breathe intraday, but the discipline shifts to what you're willing to hold into the close, since that closing number is the only one that ever gets checked. Neither rule is strictly safer — they just reward different habits, and sizing for the wrong one is how traders get caught by a rule they didn't know was live.
How to check which one you're actually trading under
Don't infer it from the firm's marketing — read the specific rules page for your specific account type, since (as with Apex above) it can vary within one firm. If you're tracking your account in ExpectancyIQ, set your firm's actual drawdown type once in Settings — end-of-day trailing, intraday trailing, or static — and the Risk & Discipline tab evaluates every trade against the real rule, so a breach shows up before it costs you an evaluation instead of after.
Getting the drawdown rule right is one part of knowing your real risk per trade — if you haven't worked out how much of your account should be on the line in the first place, that's the other half: How Much Should You Risk Per Trade?.
If you trade a prop or funded account and want your drawdown, daily loss limit, and consistency rule tracked against your account's actual numbers automatically, see the full prop trading feature set or get started free.