How to monitor a prop account: five numbers to write down every day
Most traders who lose a prop account can tell you their profit and loss to the cent. Far fewer can tell you, on the morning it happened, how far they were from the floor. The first number describes the past. The second is the one the account is closed on.
This page is a daily routine of five numbers, with the arithmetic done for DayProp forex accounts. Every percentage in it was checked on 29 September 2026 against two independent sources — our own catalogue file and the live plan configuration behind the checkout. It is arithmetic, not advice, and it does not tell you how to make money. It tells you how close the end is.
The five numbers
Write these down before the first trade of every day. Paper is fine. The point is that you calculate them while nothing is at stake.
- Opening balance. The daily loss limit is measured from it, so it changes every day.
- Today’s limit, in dollars. Daily limit percentage times the opening balance. Subtract it from the opening balance and you have the level at which today ends.
- The floor. On a static drawdown it never moves. On a trailing drawdown it is your highest balance minus the drawdown percentage, and it only ever moves up.
- Room. Opening balance minus the floor. This is everything the account has left.
- Room divided by today’s limit. The one number that combines the other four. It is how many full limit days the account can still absorb.
If the fifth number is below 1.0, a single day taken to its limit does not end the day — it ends the account. The floor has become the nearer wall, and the daily limit no longer protects you.
The one-bad-day line
Every account has a balance below which number five drops under 1.0. On a $10,000 account, before any profit:
| Account | Daily limit | Max drawdown | Floor | One-bad-day line | Distance from the start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forex, two steps | 4% | 8%, static | $9,200 | $9,583 | −4.17% |
| Forex, one step | 5% | 6%, trailing | $9,400 | $9,895 | −1.05% |
| Forex, Instant funding | 5% | 8%, trailing | $9,200 | $9,684 | −3.16% |
The line is the floor divided by one minus the daily limit. Read the one-step row: a loss of about one percent — a hundred and five dollars on this size — and the account is already one full limit day from closing. That is not a warning about bad trading. It is what 5% and 6% mean when they sit that close together.
Static and trailing floors behave differently when you are winning
On the two-step assessment the floor stays at $9,200 whatever you do. Profit therefore buys room, and number five grows with it:
| Balance | Room to the $9,200 floor | Today’s limit (4%) | Limit days left |
|---|---|---|---|
| $9,800 | $600 | $392 | 1.53 |
| $10,000 | $800 | $400 | 2.00 |
| $10,500 | $1,300 | $420 | 3.10 |
| $11,000 | $1,800 | $440 | 4.09 |
On a trailing floor that does not happen — at least while the floor is trailing. The floor follows your highest balance, so at every new high the room is exactly the drawdown percentage of that high, and the limit is the daily percentage of it. The ratio resets to the same value each time: 1.2 on the one-step assessment, 1.6 on Instant funding. While the floor trails, that is the best it gets. Profit on a trailing account raises the wall; it does not move you away from it.
Instant funding has one exception, and it changes the arithmetic. Under its written rules the trailing drawdown follows you up until you are 8% above the starting balance, and then locks at the starting balance. From that point Instant behaves like a static floor: at $11,200 the floor is $10,000, the room $1,200, the limit $560 — a ratio of 2.14, and it grows with every further dollar of profit. We have no written rule of that kind for the one-step assessment, so we do not assume one in either direction. Ask where it is written before you rely on it.
Three days on the same $10,000, three different accounts
The same sequence on each account: plus $300 on day one, minus $200 on day two, then look at the numbers on the morning of day three.
| Morning of | Two steps (static 8%, 4%) | One step (trailing 6%, 5%) | Instant (trailing 8%, 5%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Day 1, $10,000 | room $800, limit $400 — 2.00 | room $600, limit $500 — 1.20 | room $800, limit $500 — 1.60 |
| Day 2, $10,300 | floor $9,200, room $1,100, limit $412 — 2.67 | floor $9,682, room $618, limit $515 — 1.20 | floor $9,476, room $824, limit $515 — 1.60 |
| Day 3, $10,100 | floor $9,200, room $900, limit $404 — 2.23 | floor $9,682, room $418, limit $505 — 0.83 | floor $9,476, room $624, limit $505 — 1.24 |
After two days that leave it $100 up, the one-step account is below the line. On the morning of day three, the level at which the day would end is $9,595 — but the floor is $9,682, so the account closes $87 earlier than the daily limit suggests. Someone who tracks only profit and loss sees a small profit. Someone who tracks number five sees an account that one ordinary bad day will close.
This is the whole case for daily monitoring. The dangerous moment on a trailing account is not the losing streak from the start. It is the pullback right after a new high.
What to do with the number
We cannot tell you how to trade. We can tell you what the number is for:
- Size from the room, not from the limit, when the ratio is below 1.0. On day three of the one-step example, the real stop for the day is $418 away, not $505.
- Set a personal daily stop below the official one and write it next to the five numbers. The official limit is where the account closes, not a budget.
- On a trailing account, recalculate the floor every time you make a new high. It is the only one of the five numbers that changes without you losing anything.
- Once a week, count the days on which you used more than half of the day’s limit. It is a number about you, not about the market, and it tends to move before the balance does.
What is deliberately not on this page
- The prediction account. Its drawdown is calculated by a different method in our plan configuration than on the forex accounts, and we do not yet have that method described in writing. This page is nothing but drawdown arithmetic, so a wrong model would give you a wrong line. Its headline rules are on the rules page.
- Balance or equity. Whether the limit and the floor are checked against closed balance or against equity with open positions is set out in the contract for your plan. If it is equity, an open losing position counts against number four before you close it.
- Consistency rules, minimum trading days, profit caps on payouts. We have not published any, and an unconfigured field is not a written rule. Ask us — and anyone else — where the answer is written down.
- Crypto and futures accounts. Our two sources disagree on their rules, so we publish their prices and none of their rules until that is resolved.
- Profit share, and any figure from another firm. Neither is needed for this arithmetic.
The example is $10,000. Every size of the same account uses the same percentages, so the ratios are identical; only the dollar amounts scale. Check the contract for your own size before you rely on it.
Next
- How to pass a funding challenge: the arithmetic nobody does first — the same ratios, calculated on day one.
- Prop trading rules explained — what the daily limit and the drawdown mean.
- Which prop account size to buy — why a bigger account is not a looser one.
- Account sizes and prices
Not financial advice. Most traders lose. Accounts are simulated; payouts are real.