Trailing vs. EOD drawdown: the rule that fails winning traders

Drawdown is the rule most likely to end your evaluation — and the one firms
describe least clearly. Of the 103 active plans we track across 10 firms,
the split looks like this:

Model	Plans	Can a green day fail you?
End-of-day trailing	85	No
Intraday trailing	13	Yes
Static	5	No

End-of-day trailing (the default)

Your loss floor moves up with your end-of-day balance high — and only at
the close. If you're up $800 at lunch and give it all back by the bell, the
floor never saw the $800. You end flat, the account survives.

This is the model on 85 of 103 plans, including every Topstep Combine, the
entire MyFundedFutures lineup, and Tradeify's Growth and Select tiers.

Intraday trailing (read this twice)

The floor trails your peak unrealized balance in real time. Run a trade
$800 into profit, let it come back to entry, and your floor is now $800
higher than when you sat down — even though you banked nothing.

Concretely: on a 50K account with a $2,500 trailing drawdown, going up $800
unrealized moves your floor from $47,500 to $48,300. You can now close the
day green and still be one ordinary stop-out from failure tomorrow.

Thirteen plans work this way — Apex's Intraday Trailing evaluations,
Bulenox's "Trailing" variants, and Elite Trader Funding's 1-Step. They're
often the cheaper option at a given size. This is why.

Static (rare, simple)

The floor is fixed at starting balance minus the drawdown and never moves.
Only 5 plans offer it (Elite Trader Funding's Static line) — and it carries
the highest sticker price at each size, because the firm can't ratchet you.

What to check before buying

1. Does the drawdown update intraday or end-of-day? If the firm's page
   says only "trailing," assume intraday until you find it in writing.
2. Does the floor stop trailing at breakeven or a buffer above starting
   balance? Many EOD models lock once you're past the starting balance.
3. Does it count open profit on live trades? (That's the intraday tell.)

Every plan's drawdown model is a column in the comparison
table, and you can filter to EOD-only
in one click — or search "eod drawdown" in plain English.