I totally agree with you on that. The trailing max. drawdown is calculated in realtime using the paper profits which is a bit annoying. This is what happened on my first day in the live account. I took a trade in CL with 3 contracts, that moved 50 ticks in my favor and I managed to exit the trade for a 30 tick profit. But my trailing stop moved 1500 up and my profit on that trade is just 900. To be honest, I didn't know that it works this way even till I started trading the live account. Now I decided to exit the trade with limit orders till that damn thing (trailing max.drawdown )stops chasing me behind without looking for runners which is working good so far.
Thank you Trader Jagadeesh for bring this to the forefront. It would be a HUGE surprise for any trader going into the trial not knowing this important detail. I finally contacted Oneup asking them to explain this in detail and here is their response. Hope this helps add clarifying the "real-time" trailing drawdown mechanics in these prop accounts.
"You can find it in R|Trader as Auto Liquidate Threshold Value. What it does is it trails the Account Balance. It's taken from the high account balance until it reaches the initial account balance, the starting balance of your account. Example, for the $25,000 Evaluation, Account Balance is at $30,000 and you lose -$4,500 you'll still be eligible for a funded trading account.
We take it from the high account balance until it reaches the initial account balance, the starting balance of your account. So here's one example, you can be at $28,000 and lose $2,990 and still be eligible for a funded trading account (for $25k account where the Drawdown is $1500 - https://oneuptrader.com/how-it-works/).
Another example on the $50000 account. Initial drawdown limit is $2500 (50000 - 2500 = 47500). You cannot lose more than 47500. So you take a trade it goes in your favor and you make a profit of $500. Account balance at the moment is 50500 and drawdown limit is at 48000 (47500 starting drawdown limit + $500 profit = 48000).
You take another trade where it goes in your favor another $500 but you do not close it yet, you keep it floating for a while hoping it's going to provide more profit when in fact it goes against you and you close that trade with a loss -$100 loss. Keep in mind the trade had the potential profit of $500. Now the account balance is at 50400 (50500 - 100 (the loss that just occured) and drawdown limit is at 48500 (48000 + 500 the potential profit = 48500).
As you could probably tell already when you take losses nothing happens with the Trailing Drawdown, it only trails profits until it reaches the initial account balance. After it reaches this limit it will stop trailing."
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