A trailing drawdown is a loss limit that rises with your account's high water mark. Make money and the level you must stay above moves up behind you; give some back and the room you have has permanently narrowed. It is the single most consequential rule in a futures prop evaluation, and it ends more attempts than any profit target does.
How it moves, in the firms' own words
OneUp Trader publishes that the trailing drawdown will increase at a defined distance as your account balance increases. Bulenox publishes a trailing option whose loss limit follows your highest point, including open positions, in real time. That last clause is the one that catches people: where a firm trails on unrealised profit, a trade that runs up and retraces can lift the limit permanently, on a peak that never appeared on any closed balance. Leeloo publishes trailing drawdown figures against each account size on its pricing page.
Why it punishes ordinary trading
Consider an account that runs $2,000 into profit and gives back $1,500. Nothing about that is unusual and the account is still up. Under a trailing limit the level has followed the peak, so the room remaining is measured from the high water mark rather than from where the balance sits, and the account can be closer to failure after a profitable week than it was at the start. This rewards taking profit early and punishes letting a winner develop, which is the opposite of how most trend approaches work.
The alternative, and who publishes it
An end-of-day drawdown moves once a day, at the close, and only on realised profit. Take Profit Trader publishes end-of-day drawdown with no buffer requirement, and Tradeify publishes end-of-day drawdowns among what you get. Bulenox and TradeDay publish both shapes and make the trader choose. Neither shape is better in the abstract; the question is whether you hold positions through retracements, and if you do, a trailing limit that counts open positions is the rule most likely to end your account.
Questions people ask about trailing drawdown
What is the difference between trailing and static drawdown?
A trailing limit follows the account's high water mark upward. A static limit stays at a fixed level regardless of profit. An end-of-day limit sits between them, moving once a day on realised profit only. No firm in this index publishes the term static drawdown on its own pages.
Does a trailing drawdown ever stop trailing?
At several firms it stops once the account reaches a stated threshold, often the initial balance plus the drawdown distance. That threshold is published per plan on the firm's own rules page and is worth finding, because it is the point at which the account becomes materially easier to hold.
Which firms publish a trailing drawdown?
In this index, OneUp Trader, Bulenox and Leeloo publish trailing rules on their own pages, and Bulenox and TradeDay publish it as one of two options you choose between.