How to Pass a Prop Firm Evaluation: A Rules-First Plan

10 November 20266 min read

Short answer: treat the evaluation as a rules test first and a profit test second. Write every rule on one card, turn the drawdown into a fixed risk per trade, set a daily stop well inside the firm's limit, and trade one setup you have already tested, at the same size every day. An evaluation can end the moment a rule breaks, however good the rest of the month was. So the plan starts with the rules.

What a prop firm evaluation actually tests

An evaluation checks two things at once: can you make the profit target, and can you do it without breaking a single rule on the way. The second part is where accounts end. A strategy can be fine and the account can still fail on one oversized trade or one bad afternoon.

Futures evaluations often combine some of these rules:

Profit target: the gain you need before you pass.
Maximum drawdown: a floor under your balance. Touch it and the account is over. It can be static, trailing intraday or trailing at the end of the day. See trailing vs static drawdown.
Daily loss limit: the most you can lose in one session. See daily loss limits explained.
Consistency rule: a cap on how much of your profit can come from one day.
Minimum trading days: the fewest days you must trade before you can pass.
Contract limits: the most contracts you can hold at once.
News and session rules: some accounts restrict trading around big releases or holding positions past a set time.

Rules differ between firms, between account sizes and between the evaluation and the funded stage. They also change. Read the current rules page on the day you buy, not a review from last year.

Step 1: Put every rule on one card

Before your first trade, write a single card with every number that can end the account:

The profit target.
The drawdown amount and its type (static, intraday trailing or end-of-day trailing), plus the point where a trailing floor stops moving, if it has one.
The daily loss limit, whether it counts open trades, and when the day resets.
The consistency rule and how it is measured.
The contract limit.
Any news or session restrictions.
The minimum number of trading days.

If you cannot fill a line, find the answer before you trade. Guessing a rule is how good traders lose accounts.

Step 2: Turn the drawdown into R

R is the amount you risk on one trade: the distance from entry to stop, times what one point is worth, times your size. Thinking in R makes every account the same shape, whatever its size.

Start from the drawdown, not the profit target. Ask: how many full losses in a row do I want to survive before the account ends? Losing streaks are normal, even for setups that make money. Assuming each trade is independent, a setup that wins 40% of the time has close to a nine in ten chance of a run of six straight losses somewhere in 100 trades, and roughly even odds of a run of eight.

So if you want to survive ten losses in a row, keep one R a little under a tenth of your drawdown, so a little slippage on the tenth loss does not touch the floor. If the floor trails, your buffer shrinks after losses and can also shrink after open profit fades, so check your real distance to the floor each morning and size from that.

Step 3: Set a personal daily stop inside the firm's limit

The firm's daily limit is the line you never touch. Your own daily stop sits well inside it. A simple version: stop for the day after a set number of losses or a set amount in R, whichever comes first.

Leave space for things you do not control: slippage on a stop, an open trade moving against you, and fees. If your firm counts open losses toward the daily limit, an open trade can breach it before you close anything.

Step 4: Trade one setup you have tested

Buying an evaluation to find out whether a setup works is an expensive way to run a test. Backtest it first. Look at the number of trades, the result per trade in R after costs, the longest losing streak and the deepest drawdown in R. Then compare that drawdown with your account's drawdown in R. If the backtest's worst stretch is deeper than your account allows, the account is likely to end before the setup has time to work.

In Lemnal, Test turns a setup written in plain English into an automated backtest, with trust checks such as random-entry controls. Here is how to backtest a strategy without code.

Step 5: Size for the rules, not the target

The profit target tempts you to size up and get it over with. Work it out in R instead. As a made-up example: if the target equals 15R and your setup made 0.3R per trade in testing, you would need around 50 trades. That is a pace. Some weeks will be slower. Doubling size does not make the setup better. It only halves the number of losses you can take.

Contract limits are ceilings. Stay well under them. A big winning day can also cause trouble with a consistency rule, which may force you to keep trading after you reach the target.

Step 6: Know when not to trade

Write your no-trade list next to the rule card:

after you hit your daily stop;
after a set number of losses in a row;
around releases your account restricts;
when the setup is not there and you are only bored;
when you are tired, rushed or angry.

If you want to trade news days, practise them first. Replay in Lemnal lets you practise past news days as levels, scored on following your plan.

Step 7: Review every day

Five minutes after each session: did every trade match the setup, did you respect the card, and what is one rule for tomorrow? A short daily review can catch a habit before it turns into a breached account. Here is how to keep a trading journal you will actually use.

In Lemnal, Accounts keeps each prop account's rules, how much you can still lose today and payout readiness in one view, and Journal pairs your trades with a daily review.

Ways evaluations end

One trade sized far bigger than the rest.
Giving back open profit on an intraday trailing drawdown.
Revenge trades after a loss, ending in the daily limit.
Holding through a restricted release.
A huge first day that breaks the consistency rule, followed by forced trades to fix it.
Losing track of the contract limit when adding to a position.
Holding a position past the account's daily close time.

A one-page plan to copy

Rule card written and checked against the firm's current page.
R set from the drawdown and the losing streak you want to survive.
Personal daily stop in R and in number of losses.
One tested setup, with its backtest drawdown smaller than the account's.
Fixed size, no increase to chase the target.
No-trade list on screen.
Daily review with one rule for tomorrow.

This plan does not promise a pass. It is built to cut the ways accounts end that have nothing to do with your setup.

General advice warning: The information on this site is general in nature only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs, and it is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial product. Before acting on it, consider whether it is appropriate for you and seek independent professional advice. Trading futures carries a high risk of loss, and losses can exceed your deposit. Backtest results are hypothetical and do not predict future results.