Every prop firm sets a maximum loss limit — a floor your account balance can't touch. What differs, and what matters enormously, is when and how that floor moves. There are three families: end-of-day trailing, intraday trailing, and static.
01Intraday trailing
The floor follows your highest equity point in real time, including unrealised profit. Spike to +$1,500 mid-session and your floor instantly ratchets up by $1,500 — even if you give every cent back before the close. This is the most aggressive model and the primary account-killer at scale.
For a scalper running multiple accounts, intraday trailing is brutal: a normal favourable wick on an open position tightens your room on every account at once. Many traders coast through an evaluation on a friendlier model and then blow the funded account in the first week because it switched to intraday.
02End-of-day (EOD) trailing
The floor updates once per day, at the session close, based on your highest closing balance. Intraday swings are ignored. You can be down $2,000 at 10:42am and recover by the close with zero penalty.
This is materially more forgiving and the reason the 2026 market has shifted decisively toward EOD. For a scalper it means a bad sequence mid-session doesn't end your account as long as you close green (or flat) above the floor. Once your closing balance clears starting balance plus a small buffer, the floor typically locks permanently — turning accumulated profit into a real cushion.
03Static
A fixed dollar floor that never moves, up or down. On a $25K static account the floor might sit at $24,500 from day one and stay there regardless of how high you run. No trailing maths to track at all.
Static is the most predictable structure. The trade-off is that it's often paired with a tighter absolute number — a $500 static drawdown leaves little room for size — so it rewards precise risk per trade over swinging for big days.
04Side by side
| Model | Floor moves | Scalper verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Intraday trailing | Real time, on unrealised peaks | Avoid for multi-account scaling |
| EOD trailing | Once daily, on closing balance | Preferred — survivable, forgiving |
| Static | Never | Excellent if the absolute number fits your size |
On the Trader Freedom Map index the drawdown model is the first thing we tag on every firm. Filter by EOD or Static to see only the structures that survive scaling.