How to pass a funding challenge: the arithmetic nobody does first
Most people buy an assessment, read the percentages once, and start trading. The percentages are the whole product, and they are worth ten minutes with a calculator before your first position rather than after your last one.
What follows is arithmetic, not advice. Every percentage in it was checked on 23 September 2026 against two independent sources — our own catalogue file and the live plan configuration behind the checkout — and it covers DayProp forex and prediction accounts only. Where our two sources disagree, the number is not here; the last section names what is missing and why.
1. Start by converting everything into money
Percentages hide size. Do this once, on paper, for the account you are actually buying. A $10,000 two-step forex account looks like this:
| What | Percent | In dollars |
|---|---|---|
| Phase one target | +10% | $1,000 |
| Phase two target | +5% | $500 |
| Daily loss limit | 4% | $400 from the day’s opening balance |
| Maximum drawdown | 8%, static | floor at $9,200 |
Four numbers. Two of them you are trying to reach, two of them end the account. Everything else in this article follows from the relationship between them.
2. The ratio that separates the accounts: how many bad days fit inside the floor
Here is the calculation almost nobody performs. Divide the total drawdown by the daily loss limit. The result is the number of maximum-loss days the account survives.
| Account | Daily limit | Total room | Maximum-loss days it survives |
|---|---|---|---|
| Forex, two steps | 4% | 8% | 2.0 |
| Forex, one step | 5% | 6% | 1.2 |
| Forex, Instant funding | 5% | 8% | 1.6 |
| Prediction account | 3% | 6% | 2.0 |
Read the one-step row again. A single day taken to its legal limit consumes more than eight tenths of everything the account has. The one-step assessment is usually sold as the easier path because it has one phase instead of two — by this measure it is the strictest product on the list, and the shortest route from one bad morning to a closed account.
The two-step assessment has the widest margin of the four: two full limit days, and its floor is static, so profit widens the gap. That combination, not the price, is why it is the one we point beginners at.
3. How many losing trades is that, really
Pick your risk per trade, then count. On a $10,000 account risking 1% — $100 — with no winners in between:
| Account | Losses that end the day | Losses that end the account |
|---|---|---|
| Forex, two steps | 4 | 8 |
| Forex, one step | 5 | 6 |
| Forex, Instant funding | 5 | 8 |
| Prediction account | 3 | 6 |
Six consecutive losses is an ordinary run. It is not a catastrophe, it is not evidence that your method is broken, and it happens to people who eventually pass. At 1% risk on a one-step account, that ordinary run is the entire account.
Halve the risk to 0.5% and every number in that table doubles. That is the only lever in this article that is fully under your control, and it costs nothing to pull. What it costs is time — a smaller risk per trade means the target takes longer, which is precisely the trade you are being asked to make.
4. A target you cannot reach by surviving
The two-step assessment asks for +10% while allowing you to be 8% down. The one-step asks for +10% while allowing 6%. In both cases the gain required is larger than the loss permitted.
That asymmetry is the design, and it rules out exactly one approach: grinding out the target with a strategy that loses more than it makes and hopes to get there on volume. It does not rule out a losing streak — see the table above — but it does mean the account has to produce more than it gives back, over a shorter span than most people assume.
5. On a trailing floor, your own profit moves the wall
The one-step assessment, Instant funding and the prediction account all use a trailing drawdown: the floor follows your highest balance and never moves back down. Same $10,000 one-step account, 6%:
- At the start, the floor is $9,400.
- Reach $10,600 and the floor moves to $9,964.
- Reach $11,000 and the floor moves to $10,340 — above where you began.
Two consequences worth holding on to. First, a profitable week does not buy you slack; it converts profit into a higher wall. Second, once the floor rises above your starting balance, giving back what you just made is no longer neutral — it is fatal. The two-step assessment is the one product here whose floor stays where it started. The rules page explains both mechanics in full.
6. The daily limit arrives long before the margin does
Leverage on our forex accounts is 1:30 on the two-step assessment, 1:20 on the one-step and 1:50 on Instant funding. Traders read those as the constraint on position size. They are not — the daily limit gets there first.
On a $10,000 two-step account, 1:30 permits roughly $300,000 of notional exposure, about three standard lots of a major pair. On a standard lot of a USD-quoted pair one pip is $10, so three lots move about $30 per pip. Your $400 daily limit is therefore roughly 13 pips of adverse movement away, on a position the platform will happily open for you.
That is the sentence to remember: the platform lets you build a position that a normal intraday wiggle can close your account with. Margin is not a safety rail. Leverage per instrument class differs from the headline number and is set out in the contract for your plan.
7. What “efficiently” can and cannot mean
The honest answer to “how do I pass this quickly” is that speed and survival pull against each other, and the rules are built so that the fast route is the fragile one. What you can do is remove the failures that owe nothing to the market:
- Write the four dollar figures from section 1 on paper before the first trade, for your size, not for the $10,000 example.
- Set a personal daily stop well under the official one — half is a common choice. The limit is the point where the account closes, not a budget to spend.
- On a trailing account, recalculate the floor from your highest balance, not your starting one. That is the number the system is watching.
- Size the position from the daily limit, not from available margin. See section 6.
- Read the contract for your own account size. Targets and rules are configured per plan, and one size can be set up differently from the rest.
The numbers in one table
| Account | Target | Daily limit | Max drawdown | Leverage | Limit days in the floor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forex, two steps | +10%, then +5% | 4% | 8%, static | 1:30 | 2.0 |
| Forex, one step | +10% | 5% | 6%, trailing | 1:20 | 1.2 |
| Forex, Instant funding | none | 5% | 8%, trailing | 1:50 | 1.6 |
| Prediction account | +10% | 3% | 6%, trailing | — | 2.0 |
What is deliberately not on this page
- Minimum trading days, minimum profitable days and consistency rules. Those fields are not configured on our plans, and an empty field is not the same as a written rule saying there is none. We are asking our platform partner to confirm it in writing. Until then, ask us — and anyone else — where the answer is written down.
- Time limits and inactivity limits. We do not have them in writing either. They are in the contract you see before paying.
- Crypto and futures rules. Our two sources disagree on the daily limit, the drawdown and the profit share for those products. We publish their prices and none of their rules until the disagreement is resolved.
- The profit share on the one-step assessment. Same reason. It is on the checkout contract for that plan.
- Any other firm’s numbers. We do not hold them, so we do not quote them.
A missing number is cheaper than a wrong one — for us, and for whoever sizes a position with it.
Next
- Prop trading rules explained — what each rule means, and eight questions to ask any firm.
- What a prop account costs — every size, checked against the live checkout.
- How to monitor a prop account — the same ratios, recalculated every day as the account moves.
- Account sizes and prices — pick a size and see the numbers for it.
Not financial advice. Most traders lose. Accounts are simulated; payouts are real.