The evaluation — “the eval”

How do I prove I can trade their money?

8 min read

What you actually buy

You choose an account size and pay a fee for an evaluation account — a simulated account pre-loaded with a starting balance. Your goal is simple to state and hard to do: reach a profit target without ever breaking a rule.

1
Pick a size
Larger accounts have larger targets, larger drawdowns, and higher fees. Bigger is not better — pick the size whose rules you can actually respect.
2
Pay the eval fee
Often monthly, and often discounted. This is the only money at risk if you fail.
3
Hit the profit target
Grow the balance to the target (e.g. +$3,000 on a 50K account) trading the firm's platform.
4
Never break a rule
One rule breach can end the evaluation instantly, no matter how much profit you were up.

The rules that can fail you

Every firm has its own set, but futures evals almost always include these. Know them cold before you place a trade:

Profit target — the balance you must reach to pass. This is the only *good* rule; the rest are guards.
Trailing threshold / drawdown — a moving floor under your account. Touch it and you fail. This is the one that catches new traders (next section).
Contract / position limits — a cap on how much size you can hold at once. Exceed it and you can be failed or have trades voided.
Product & timing rules — some firms bar trading through major news or require positions flat by session close. Read your firm's list.

The asymmetry that ends evals

You pass slowly (grind to the target) but you fail instantly (one breach). That asymmetry is the whole game. Protecting the account beats chasing the target every single day.

The trailing drawdown, explained slowly

The trailing drawdown is a maximum-loss line that follows your account upward as you make money, then stops following once you're safely funded. It is the single most misunderstood rule in prop trading, so here it is step by step, using a 50K-style account with a $2,000 trailing drawdown.

1
Day 0 — you start
Balance $50,000. Your fail line sits $2,000 below, at $48,000.
2
You get to +$1,500
Balance $51,500. The line trails up with your gains to $49,500. You now have less room below you, not more.
3
You give back to +$600
Balance $50,600. The line does NOT come back down — it stays at its highest point ($49,500). Your cushion is now only $1,100.
4
Why people blow up
After a good run the fail line is much closer than they think. One oversized revenge trade taps $49,500 and the account is gone — even though they're still up on the day.

End-of-Day vs intraday trailing

How the line trails matters enormously. With End-of-Day (EOD) trailing (Apex), the line only moves up based on your *closing* balance each day — intraday spikes don't tighten it. With intraday trailing, it follows your highest unrealized profit tick-by-tick, which is far less forgiving. Always know which one your account uses.

The trailing line goes up with your wins and never comes back down. Trade like it's right behind you — because it is.

Failing and resetting

Fail an evaluation and it's not the end — you reset. A reset gives you a fresh evaluation account, usually for a fee (sometimes free during promotions). Most funded traders failed at least one eval first. What separates them is that they treated each failure as feedback about their discipline, not their strategy.

The reset trap

Cheap resets can quietly become a subscription to your own bad habits. If you're resetting repeatedly, the problem is almost never the setup — it's position size, revenge trades, or ignoring the trailing line. Fix the behaviour before buying the next reset.

Remember this

You pass an eval slowly and fail it instantly — protecting the account beats chasing the target.
The trailing drawdown follows you up and never comes back down; after a good run it's closer than you think.
Know whether your trailing is End-of-Day or intraday, and treat resets as feedback on discipline, not strategy.