Education

The rules behind the numbers

Written against the same verified records as the rankings, with real examples from real firms rather than invented ones.

Why "5% daily drawdown" tells you almost nothing

Three firms on this site quote a daily loss limit. All three calculate it differently, and the difference decides whether you breach on a given day. Here is the same account, on the same morning, under all three rules.

Worked example. One account: previous day closed at $102,000, today opens with balance $102,000 and equity $103,000. Each firm’s own published rule is applied unchanged. Hola Prime’s 3% is the tightest floor and FTMO’s 5% is the loosest — the percentages rank exactly backwards from the actual risk.

Firm	Headline	Calculated from	Measured on	Practical effect
Hola Prime	3%	Previous day's closing balance	Balance or equity	Your limit moves with yesterday's result. A good day raises tomorrow's floor.
FTMO 2-Step	5%	Balance recorded at 00:00 CE(S)T	Equity, including floating	Open losses count immediately. A position left running through midnight resets against a new baseline.
FundingPips	5%	The higher of opening balance or opening equity	Equity, including floating	Taking the higher of the two is trader-favourable — the only firm here doing it.

Same industry, same vocabulary, three different rules. This is why our comparison table writes the basis out in full instead of showing a percentage.

Static versus trailing maximum loss

A static floor is set once from your starting balance and never moves. A trailing floor follows your account up, so profit raises the level at which you fail. Two accounts quoting "10% max loss" can be materially different products.

Both products quote “10% maximum loss”. The static floor leaves $40,000 of room at the peak; the trailing floor leaves $10,000 and closes the account on an ordinary pullback. FTMO runs the static version on its 2-Step and the trailing version on its 1-Step.

Static — FTMO 2-Step, FundingPips, Hola Prime

On a $100,000 account at 10%, the floor is $90,000 forever. Run the account to $130,000 and you still have $40,000 of room. Simpler, and more forgiving after a winning run.

Trailing end-of-day — FTMO 1-Step

The floor recalculates from your highest end-of-day balance. Reach $130,000 and the floor climbs to $120,000 — your room is still 10%, never more. FTMO also resets this fully when a reward is withdrawn, which most trailing implementations do not.

Note that FTMO runs both types, on two products with nearly identical names. Anyone comparing "FTMO" as a single entity gets this wrong.

Consistency rules: same word, three formulas

Firm	Headline	Actual formula	Applies to
FTMO 1-Step	50%	Best day as a share of the sum of positive days only	Passing and payout
Hola Prime	40%	Best day as a share of total profit	On-demand payout
FundingPips	35%	Best day as a share of total profit	On Demand and Monthly cycles

FTMO's 50% looks the loosest but excludes losing days from the denominator, which makes it tighter than the number suggests. Ranking these by percentage alone reverses the real order.

Soft breaches — the rules that cost money quietly

A hard breach closes your account and you know immediately. A soft breach deducts profit, cuts your split, or adds conditions, and many traders never notice the clause until it fires.

Worked example — FundingPips Striking System

On Master Accounts above $25,000 running the 8% target, a warning is recorded each time one trade idea's combined floating loss reaches 1.2% of account size. The trade is never force-closed.

Warning	Consequence
1st	That idea's profit is deducted
2nd	Reward split halved, for example 80% to 40%
3rd	Reward split drops to 20%
4th	Account breached

Warnings are cumulative for the life of the account and do not reset after a payout. Switching to the Monthly cycle tightens the trigger from 1.2% to 1.0%. None of this appears in any headline comparison table, because it is not a number.

Counterparty structure: which company actually holds the contract

Hola Prime is the clearest example on this site. Its simulated-trading operator is in Hong Kong. Execution runs through an FSC Mauritius licensed dealer for MT4 and MT5 — but through a Florida LLC for DXTrade, cTrader and Match-Trader. Choosing a platform therefore changes which entity you face, and only one of those two is licensed. No comparison site records this.