Every article, grouped in one place
First-party studies, mechanism explainers and per-firm rule guides. No firm ranking, no pass-rate claim about any named company — every figure here is either derived by arithmetic or computed from a stated, seeded simulation. Search engines and LLMs are pointed at every one of these through sitemap.xml and llms.txt; this page is the same index for a person.
Research original data
Reproducible, seeded studies with a published methodology and dataset — the subject is the mechanic, never a named firm's pass rate.
- Static vs trailing drawdown: how the floor mechanic changes pass probability One fixed trader profile run against 8 real rule sets, then against a static-floor counterfactual of each — 20,000 seeded paths per cell.
- Why prop firm evaluations fail — interactive tour A scroll-driven walkthrough of the mechanics that end evaluations: how a trailing floor ratchets, why the binding rule is often not the one traders watch.
The Mechanism series 5 of 8 published
An eight-part series on the arithmetic underneath simulation, sizing, cost and capital — each one an independent, interactive explainer rather than a restatement of the others. Three more are on the way.
- 01 · What a trading simulation tells you before you risk money — and what it cannot A Monte Carlo laboratory run beside the exact answer it is estimating: watch a simulated probability converge onto a known truth.
- 02 · Why your backtest lied: fitting a trading rule to pure noise A backtest reports the best of everything you tried. On a price series with no edge in it at all, "the best of everything" still looks like a strategy.
- 03 · When five positions are really one position: correlation and portfolio heat Six positions at 1% of capital each do not carry six independent risks — the effective number of bets is what actually sizes the exposure.
- 04 · What trading costs per trade: spread, commission and slippage, computed Three different mechanisms with three different behaviours, together setting a toll charged on every position — and the frequency where it exceeds the edge.
- 05 · What trading capital keeps: dispersion, inflation, tax and the order of returns Four operations spend a trader's capital. Only one of them sends an invoice — the other three are just as real and much easier to miss.
Concepts explained 3 articles
The definitional explainers behind the terms used everywhere else on the site.
- Trailing drawdown, explained: why profitable accounts are eliminated The floor is F = M − A, derived rather than measured: five results follow from that one definition by arithmetic alone.
- Risk of ruin, explained for prop traders The probability of hitting an unrecoverable floor before a positive edge compounds — and why position size, not edge, is the dominant lever.
- Expectancy vs win rate: why a 90% win rate can still lose money Win rate does not determine profitability — expectancy does. Six profiles compared; the three highest win rates are the net losers.
Rule guides 2 articles
How one specific, named firm's published rule works, in full — no pass rate, no ranking, just the mechanic and the firm's own worked example.
- Apex trailing drawdown, explained The intraday trailing floor with freeze-at-initial: the ratchet on unrealized peaks, the room formula, and the firm's own worked example.
- Topstep consistency rule, explained The published 50% consistency requirement rewritten as max(target, 2 × best day), and how it interacts with the 2% daily loss limit.