How do I calculate a trailing drawdown floor?

For a pure trailing drawdown, the floor is the highest balance the account has ever reached minus the maximum drawdown. Your remaining room is your current balance minus that floor.

What does a trailing drawdown that locks mean?

The floor trails the peak upward until it would reach the starting balance plus a small buffer (commonly $100), then it freezes permanently. After the lock, further profit does not create more room below, and the floor sits above the starting balance.

What is an end-of-day drawdown?

The floor is measured only from settled end-of-day balances, so an intraday spike that you give back in the same session does not raise the floor. Today's unsettled profit does not move it either.

What is a static drawdown?

A static drawdown is anchored to the starting balance and never moves. The floor is the starting balance minus the maximum drawdown, so every dollar of profit is additional room.

Free calculator

Trailing drawdown calculator

Prop futures accounts are not lost to bad trades — they are lost to a floor the trader could not locate. Enter your account size, your max drawdown and, crucially, which drawdown model your firm uses. This tool shows exactly where your floor sits right now and how much room is left before the account is gone.

1. Your account

Starting balance ($)

Max drawdown ($)

Drawdown model

Current balance ($)

Your account balance right now, including closed P&L.

Highest balance reached ($)

The running peak your firm measures the drawdown from.

Your floor

—

liquidation / breach level

Room left

—

balance − floor

Peak used

—

what the floor follows

2. Why “trailing, then locks” blows accounts

This model is the one traders misread, so it is worth being blunt about. The floor trails your peak up — and then, once it would reach starting balance + buffer, it stops. Forever. After that point, going higher does not buy you more room below, and the floor is above your starting balance. A trader who is up $10,000 and still believes their floor is trailing $2,500 behind them is wrong by thousands of dollars.

Watch the floor freeze as the peak climbs (using the numbers you entered above):

Peak balance	Peak − drawdown	Actual floor	Room at peak	State

Read this twice: once the floor is locked, every dollar of profit you give back is a dollar closer to a breach that no future high can undo. The lock is a one-way ratchet.

3. Walk your account day by day

Paste your daily P&L (one number per line, or comma-separated) and see where the floor sat at the end of each day, under the model you selected above. Negative numbers for losing days.

Daily P&L, oldest first

Example: 1500, -1600, 900, -1200

Options

Last row is today (not yet settled)

Matters only for the end-of-day model: an unsettled session must not raise the floor yet. That is exactly what an EOD rule means.

Day	P&L	Balance	Peak used	Floor	Room	State

4. The four drawdown models

Trailing (intraday peak)

floor = highest balance ever − drawdown

The floor follows your running peak, including intraday spikes, and never locks. Harsh but predictable: your room below is always exactly the full drawdown at a new high.

Cited in our firm catalog for e.g. Topstep, MyFundedFutures Rapid, Elite Trader Funding Fast Track.

Trailing, then locks

floor = min(peak − drawdown, lock level)

Trails up, then freezes permanently at the lock level (commonly starting balance + $100). The floor ends up above your starting balance, and no later high moves it.

Our tracker supports this model because several US futures firms have used a “trails until it locks” threshold. We do not attribute it to a named firm here — check your own firm's current rule document.

End-of-day (EOD)

floor = highest settled daily close − drawdown

Only settled end-of-day balances raise the floor. An intraday spike you give back the same session does not cost you room — which is why the same trades produce a very different floor from the pure trailing model.

Cited in our firm catalog for e.g. Apex 4.0 EOD programs, Take Profit Trader, Earn2Trade Trader Career Path.

Static

floor = starting balance − drawdown

Anchored to day one and never moves. Every dollar of profit is genuinely extra room. Usually paired with a tighter drawdown number in exchange.

Cited in our firm catalog for e.g. MyFundedFutures Flex/Builder, Elite Trader Funding Static.

Verify with your firm. Prop-firm rules change often, sometimes mid-program, and the firm names above are listed only as examples of a model — not as endorsements, and not as a promise about their current terms. Read your own rule document and confirm your model, your drawdown number and your lock level before you trade a dollar of it.

Notes on the math

Room left is current balance − floor. At zero or below, the account is breached.
We flag warning when less than 25% of the drawdown allowance remains — the same threshold our tracker uses.
Daily-loss limits are a separate rule and are not modelled here; a day can be killed by the daily limit long before the drawdown floor.
This tool uses closed-trade balance. If your firm measures the drawdown against unrealised equity, your live floor bites earlier than shown.

Educational tool. Not financial advice, and no affiliation with any prop firm.

Want this tracked for you, live?

Trade2Profit is a trading journal that watches your prop rules against your real trades every day — floor, room left, daily loss, profit target, consistency. The app is in Hebrew.

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