Trailing vs Static Drawdown: The Rule That Decides Your Pass

Nordic Funder applies a trailing maximum drawdown on exactly one track: the FX & CFD One-Step, at 6%. Every other track — Two-Step, Three-Step, both Lite tracks, Crypto, Equities and Instant Funding Lite — uses a static maximum drawdown measured from the account's starting balance. Trailing means your loss floor climbs with every new equity peak; static means the floor is set on day one and never moves again.

That single distinction changes how you should size positions, when you should bank profit, and whether a mid-assessment giveback is survivable. Below is the same $100,000 account run through both rules, then the second rule that catches more traders than the first: the difference between an end-of-day daily loss limit and an intraday trailing one.

Static drawdown: one number, fixed for the whole assessment

Take the FX & CFD Two-Step at $100,000. Maximum drawdown is 8% static, so the floor is $92,000. It is $92,000 on your first trade and $92,000 after you have made $9,000. Equity can travel from $100,000 to $109,000 and back to $93,000 without breaching, because the rule only ever compares your equity against one fixed level.

The Three-Step is stricter in headline terms — 5% static, a $95,000 floor on a $100,000 account — but the mechanic is identical. You get one number, and profit does not tighten it. What profit buys you on a static account is a genuine cushion: the distance between your equity and the floor widens permanently as you go.

Trailing drawdown: the floor follows your equity peak

The One-Step uses 6% trailing. The floor is not $94,000 forever — $94,000 is only where it starts, because 6% is measured from the highest equity the account has reached, not from the opening balance. Every new high drags the floor up behind it. On a $100,000 One-Step:

• Equity peak $100,000 — floor $94,000
• Equity peak $102,000 — floor $95,880
• Equity peak $104,000 — floor $97,760
• Equity peak $106,000 — floor $99,640
• Equity peak $108,000 — floor $101,520
• Equity peak $110,000 (the 10% target) — floor $103,400

Two things are worth reading off that ladder. First, the dollar cushion measured from the peak never shrinks — at a $106,000 peak you still have $6,360 of room, more than the $6,000 you started with, because 6% of a bigger number is a bigger number. Traders who describe trailing drawdown as "the room keeps shrinking" have the mechanic backwards.

Second, and this is the part that ends assessments: the floor crosses your starting balance once your equity peak passes roughly $106,383. Above that peak, giving everything back to breakeven is a breach. On a static account, breakeven is never a breach. That is the real cost of a trailing rule — not a smaller cushion, but a moving one that eventually sits above the number you deposited against.

Where the crossover sits

Because trailing is measured off the peak, a smaller trailing percentage is not automatically the softer rule. Compare the One-Step's 6% trailing against the Three-Step's 5% static on $100,000. On the very first trade the Three-Step is tighter: $95,000 versus $94,000. But the One-Step floor overtakes it as soon as your equity peak passes about $101,064, and from then on the trailing track is the stricter of the two, permanently.

Against the Two-Step's 8% static there is no crossover at all — $94,000 is already above $92,000 on day one, and the gap only widens. At the point both accounts are sitting on $110,000, the One-Step has $6,600 of room to its floor and the Two-Step has $18,000. That is the trade you are making when you pick a single-phase route: one target instead of two, in exchange for a floor that chases you. The full phase-count comparison is in One-Step vs Two-Step vs Three-Step.

The second rule: EOD balance versus intraday trailing daily loss

Maximum drawdown gets the attention. The daily loss limit is what actually closes most accounts, and Nordic Funder measures it two completely different ways depending on the track.

EOD balance — the three staged FX tracks

One-Step (5%), Two-Step (4%) and Three-Step (5%) all use an end-of-day balance basis. The limit is anchored to your balance at the close of the previous session and then holds still for the whole day. On a $100,000 One-Step that opens the day at $100,000, the daily floor is $95,000 and it stays $95,000. Rally to $104,000 intraday, give back $9,000, and you have not breached the daily rule — because the anchor never followed you up.

Intraday trailing — Lite, Crypto, Equities and Instant Funding

One-Step Lite (2.5%), Two-Step Lite (3%), both Crypto tracks (2.5% and 3%), Equities One-Step Daily (1.5%) and Instant Funding Lite (1%) use an intraday trailing daily loss. Here the reference point moves with the highest equity your account touches during the session, so unrealised profit is immediately part of what you can lose.

Same $100,000, same intraday rally, on a One-Step Lite at 2.5%: the day opens with a floor of $97,500, you trade up to $104,000, and the floor moves with you to $101,400. Handing back $2,600 from that high ends the day — while the One-Step trader beside you absorbed $9,000 without touching their limit. Identical price action, two different outcomes, decided entirely by the basis.

This is why the cheaper Lite tracks are not simply discounted versions of the staged ones. Fees are lower and leverage is higher, but the daily rule is a materially harder constraint. If you scalp, hold through drawdown, or run a strategy that spends the session oscillating around a level, read the daily loss basis before you read the price.

Which floor binds first

Both rules are live at once, and the one that matters is whichever floor sits higher. On the staged FX tracks the arithmetic is tidy: if you start a day at a fresh equity high, the 5% daily floor (95% of that balance) is always above the 6% trailing floor (94% of the same peak), so the daily rule binds first. Start the day below your peak and it inverts. Peak $106,000 gives a trailing floor of $99,640; open the day at $102,000 and the daily floor is only $96,900, so the maximum drawdown is now the binding constraint and you have $2,360 of room, not $5,100.

The practical habit: after any losing stretch, recalculate from your peak, not from today's balance. Traders breach trailing accounts because they keep sizing off the number in front of them.

Choosing on purpose

There is no universally better rule, only a better fit. A trailing floor suits a trader who takes profit in steps and rarely sits on an open giveback — you are compensated with a single phase and no second target. A static floor suits anyone who needs room to be wrong for a while: swing positions, wider stops, or an algo whose equity curve is choppy by design. Wherever you are shopping — Nordic Funder, FTMO, FundedNext — the two structural questions are the same, and they are worth answering before you look at a price: does the floor move, and is the daily limit anchored to balance or to equity.

Two rules that do not vary by track: assessments have no time limit, so you are never forced into a trade to beat a clock, and the fee is one-time and non-refundable. Inactivity is the only clock — 30 days on the staged FX tracks, 14 days on Crypto, Equities and Instant Funding. Once funded, the split is 80% (up to 90% with the profit-share add-on) and the first withdrawal has no delay, then every 14 days. See payouts for the mechanics, how it works for the assessment flow, or how to pass a prop firm challenge for the execution side of the same problem.

Drawdown and daily loss rules by track, on a $100,000 account

Percentages are the published rules for each track; $100,000 is an available size on all nine. Dollar floors are arithmetic on those percentages — the trailing figures treat 6% as measured from the running equity peak, which is what produces a $99,640 floor at a $106,000 peak. Confirm the exact reference point on your dashboard before sizing. Rules are identical across every account size within a track; only the fee changes.