How does Apex's trailing drawdown work?

The trailing threshold follows your highest achieved equity — including unrealized, intraday peaks — at a fixed dollar distance. Every new equity high drags the elimination line up behind you. Once the threshold reaches your starting balance, it locks there and stops trailing.

Why do accounts fail the Apex evaluation while in profit?

Because the floor moved. If your open position spikes equity to a new peak and then retraces, the threshold that ratcheted up on the unrealized peak can be hit even though your realized balance is above the starting balance. A drawdown that a static-floor account survives is fatal under an intraday trailing floor.

Do free prop firm calculators model trailing drawdown correctly?

Most simulate a static floor from the starting balance. On identical trading statistics, a static-floor model can report a materially higher pass probability than a rule-faithful intraday trailing model — the gap is commonly 10–20 percentage points at typical retail risk sizes.

Firm Rules, Explained · Apex Trader Funding

The trailing drawdown that ends Apex evaluations — while they're up

Rules last verified: 2026-07 · verification log

Ask traders who failed an Apex evaluation what killed them and most will say "one bad day." Look at the account statements and the answer is usually more precise: the trailing threshold caught up with a retracement — often on an account that was comfortably in profit minutes earlier. This page explains the exact mechanism, why generic calculators misprice it, and how to test your own statistics against it before the fee leaves your card.

What the rule actually does

Apex's evaluation uses a trailing drawdown computed on intraday equity peaks, including unrealized profit. Three properties make it the harshest drawdown variant in the industry:

It ratchets on peaks, not closes. If an open position spikes your equity to a new high and then retraces before you exit, the elimination line has already moved up — permanently. You never banked that profit; the threshold doesn't care.
It only moves up. Every new peak drags the floor behind you at a fixed dollar distance. There is no reset.
It freezes at your starting balance. Once the trailing threshold climbs to the initial balance, it locks there. From that point the evaluation behaves like a static-floor account — which is why the early days, when the floor is still trailing tight beneath you, are statistically the most lethal.

Static drawdown: the dip at mid-chart survives — the floor stayed where it started.

Intraday trailing: the identical dip is fatal — the floor climbed with the unrealized peak.

A worked example

Say your trailing threshold is $3,000 on a $100,000 evaluation:

You start at $100,000. The elimination line sits at $97,000.
A strong open position pushes your equity to an intraday peak of $102,400 — unrealized. The line is now $99,400.
The trade retraces and you exit at $100,900. You're up $900 on the evaluation. The line stays at $99,400.
The next morning a normal two-loss sequence takes equity to $99,350. Evaluation over — on an account that never closed a losing day badly and was net positive throughout.

Under a static 6% floor the same sequence isn't even close to failure. That difference — floor mechanics, not strategy quality — is the single largest source of error in free pass-rate calculators.

What this does to your real pass probability

When the same trading statistics are simulated under a static floor and under a rule-faithful intraday trailing floor, the pass probability drops materially — in our engine validation, a weak-edge profile that showed 56.5% under a static model showed 45.8% under trailing mechanics on identical inputs. At typical retail risk sizes the gap widens. If the calculator you used before your last attempt modeled a static floor, its number wasn't an estimate — it was flattery.

Also modeled for Apex: no daily loss limit during the evaluation (the engine turns the daily check off), and the 30% consistency guideline — applied at pass in the simulation for conservatism. Every simplification is disclosed in the preset's modeling notes inside the engine, and dated on the rule changelog.

What actually improves your odds

Risk size is the dominant lever. Trailing floors punish equity volatility; pulling risk per trade into the engine's computed safe band typically moves pass probability more than any strategy tweak.
Respect the early game. The floor trails tightest before it locks at the initial balance. Some traders deliberately trade smaller until the freeze, then normalize.
Mind unrealized spikes. Letting winners run far beyond your take-profit raises the peak — and the floor — without banking anything. Under this rule specifically, that habit has a hidden cost.

Stop guessing. Simulate your stats against Apex's actual rules.

Type your win rate, average R, and risk size — or import your trade CSV — and get your pass probability, dominant failure cause, expected attempts, and expected fee spend under intraday trailing mechanics. Free, no signup, computed entirely in your browser.

Run the Apex simulation — free

Opens the engine with the Apex rule set pre-loaded. Nothing you enter leaves your device — methodology.

PropSurvival is independent analytical software and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Apex Trader Funding. Rule descriptions reflect our verification dated above; firms change rules without notice — the firm's own documentation is always the final authority. Nothing here is investment advice.