Question 1

What is a trailing drawdown?

Accepted Answer

A loss limit that follows your profit upwards. Win, and the floor under you rises with the win; lose it back, and the floor does not come back down with you. The distance you are allowed to fall is measured from your best moment, not from what you started with, so a good week makes the account more fragile rather than less. Of the 126 firms read plan by plan, 59 move the floor on live equity at some stage — it rises on an unrealised tick, before you have closed anything.

Question 2

What does it mean that the floor "freezes"?

Accepted Answer

It means the floor stops chasing you once it reaches a stated point — usually your starting balance. Up to that point the account behaves like a trailing drawdown; past it, every dollar you make is yours to lose without failing. It is the single line that separates a hard product from an impossible one, and it is why "trailing drawdown" on its own tells a reader almost nothing. 64 of the 126 firms read publish a freeze point in writing.

Question 3

Static, end-of-day or intraday — which one actually closes accounts?

Accepted Answer

The three are sold under the same two words and they are not the same product. A static floor is set on day one and never moves. An end-of-day floor recalculates once, after the close, so an intraday swing cannot breach it. An intraday floor is measured on every tick, which means an open position that is winning and then gives it back can end the account without a single closed trade. Across the 126 firms read: 24 never move the floor, 31 move it at the daily close, 55 move it on the tick, and for 16 no document we saved says which.

Question 4

What is a consistency rule?

Accepted Answer

A cap on how much of your profit any single day is allowed to be — typically twenty to fifty per cent. What makes it different from every other rule is when it is applied: not while you trade, but when you ask to be paid. You can hit the target, break nothing, and still be told the money is not withdrawable because one day was too good. 84 of the 126 firms read carry one that bites at payout.

Question 5

What is a "simulated funded" account?

Accepted Answer

An account where passing the exam does not put your order in a market. The prices are real, the fill is not: the firm is the other side of every trade you make, and what it pays you is a bonus calculated from a simulation it runs and grades. That is not a scandal by itself — it is the industry's standard product and several firms say so plainly. It only matters that you know which one you bought. Of the 126 firms read, 74 describe the funded stage as simulated with no route to real capital, 35 publish a route to a live stage, and 5 say the funded account is live.

Question 6

What is a daily loss limit, and when is it measured?

Accepted Answer

A second floor, reset every day, that sits above the account floor and fails you on its own. The percentage is the part the marketing shows; the clock is the part that decides. Measured at the daily close, only realised losses count and an open position that recovers never touches it. Measured on the tick, unrealised drawdown counts, and a trade that ends the day green can still have breached the limit at eleven in the morning. Of the 126 firms read, 69 enforce it on the tick and 11 at the close; the other 46 do not say.

Question 7

What happens to my drawdown after I get paid?

Accepted Answer

For some firms, nothing. For others, taking your money is the event that tightens the account: the floor is recalculated against the balance you are left with, so the buffer you spent months building leaves with the withdrawal and you are back at day one with less room than you had the day before you asked. It is the least intuitive clause in the category, because it punishes the only outcome you were working towards. 29 of the 126 firms read tighten the floor when you withdraw.

Question 8

Why do firms impose a minimum hold time?

Accepted Answer

Officially, to exclude latency arbitrage and news scalping — strategies that profit from the firm's own price feed rather than from the market. In practice it also disqualifies a legitimate style, and it is checked retroactively: the trades are counted when you request the payout, not blocked when you place them, so a trader finds out about it at the end. 37 of the 126 firms read publish one.

Question 9

How long until the first payout?

Accepted Answer

The wait starts when the funded account opens, and it is counted in trading days rather than calendar days, so a month of thin weeks stretches it further than the figure suggests. Among the 93 firms that publish one, the shortest is 0 days and the longest 30, with a middle of 8. The number worth checking first is not the shortest one, though — it is whether the firm publishes any: 33 of the 126 read do not.

Question 10

Is there a cap on what I can withdraw?

Accepted Answer

Two different caps get sold as one. A per-request cap limits a single withdrawal and is usually harmless — you ask again next cycle. A cumulative cap limits what the account will ever pay you across its whole life, and once you reach it the account is finished as an earning instrument no matter how well it is trading. 47 of the 126 firms read publish a per-request cap; 8 publish a lifetime one.

Question 11

Can the firm refuse a payout whenever it wants?

Accepted Answer

Some say so in writing. A discretion clause lets the firm decline or claw back a payout on its own judgement — usually worded around "manipulation", "abuse" or "gaming", terms the same document does not define. Where such a clause exists, every other number on the page is a courtesy: the target, the split and the cap all describe what happens when the firm chooses to pay. 95 of the 126 firms read reserve it explicitly.

Question 12

Is the profit split really 90%?

Accepted Answer

The number on the banner is the number at the end. Several firms pay a lower share at the first funded stage and reach the advertised figure only after a scaling step, a number of payouts, or a time on the account — all conditions published somewhere other than the banner. 9 of the 126 firms read publish more than one split across their stages, which means the headline is the ceiling and not the rate.

Question 13

Does passing cost more than the challenge fee?

Accepted Answer

Usually, because the fee buys one attempt and most people need more than one. What to price is the retry, not the entry: 6 of the 126 firms read give a failed candidate a free reset, 26 sell it at a discount and 34 charge full price again, and 60 do not say. On top of that, 12 publish a processing fee taken out of the payout itself.

Question 14

Can they change the rules after I paid?

Accepted Answer

Most reserve the right in the same document that sells you the account. The clause matters more than it sounds, because the rules it covers are the ones that decide whether you are paid, and a change is retroactive to a position you already hold. The defence is versioning — a dated document with a visible history — and almost nobody offers it: 98 of the 126 firms read may change terms without notice, while only 60 publish a versioned rulebook.

Question 15

Where do the binding rules actually live?

Accepted Answer

Not always in the contract. The clause that ends an account is often in a help-centre article the contract never names, or inside the dashboard, visible only after you have paid — and both of those can be rewritten by one person in an afternoon with no version history and no notice. Where the rule lives is therefore a fact about the rule, not about the website. Of the 126 firms read, 50 keep the binding rules in the contract, 61 in a help centre and 2 behind the login.

Question 16

Is any of these firms regulated?

Accepted Answer

The short answer is the silence, and it is counted. A prop firm that sells a simulated account is generally not selling a financial product, so no regulator is required — which is a defensible position and not the same as saying so. Of the 126 firms read, the number that name a regulator anywhere in their own documents is 3. The rest do not, and a reader should treat "regulated" language in their marketing as a claim with nothing behind it until a licence number appears.

Question 17

How often do these firms contradict themselves?

Accepted Answer

Often enough that it is a field in this register rather than a note. A contradiction here means two pages of the same firm, saved on the same day, publishing different rules for the same product — a drawdown of 8% and of 10%, a first payout at 14 days and at 30. It matters beyond the untidiness: when the documents disagree, the one that governs your account is whichever the firm points at after the dispute has started. 112 of the 126 firms read carry at least one on file.

Question 18

Which firms publish who they will not sell to?

Accepted Answer

Almost none, and that is the answer a reader outside the US and the EU needs. A country list is the one term that surfaces after the money has moved — at KYC, or at the first payout, when a payment processor declines and a support ticket explains the account should never have been sold. Of the 126 firms read, 39 publish a country restriction of any kind. The other 87 say nothing, and silence here is not permission: it is a term you will read for the first time when it is being used against you. This register cannot tell you which firms accept any particular country, because the firms do not publish it.

Question 19

Who is on the other side of my trade?

Accepted Answer

On a simulated account, the firm. That makes your loss its revenue and your payout its cost, which is a conflict of interest rather than a fraud — it only becomes a problem when the same party also writes the rules, grades the exam and decides the disputes, which is the ordinary arrangement here. What separates firms is whether they name the counterparty at all: 37 of the 126 read do.

Question 20

How much of this list has actually been read?

Accepted Answer

Part of it, and the page says which part before it says anything else. 126 firms have been read plan by plan, with the quote, the URL and the saved copy behind every field; the remaining 26 of the 152 in the register are listed and not yet read, which means they carry no score and no accusation. A firm with no verdict here has not passed anything and has not failed anything — nobody has opened its documents yet.

Twenty questions, answered with citations

What actually closes the account