Guide · Evaluations
How to pass a prop firm challenge
Quick answer
Pass by solving the drawdown, not the target. Risk 0.5% of the account per trade, take one or two setups a day on one or two instruments, and stop for the day after two losses. That gives you twenty consecutive losses of room and reaches a 10% target in roughly twenty winning trades at 1:1 — with no time limit forcing you to rush.
Step 1 — convert every rule into dollars.
Percentages are useless in the middle of a trade. Before your first order, write down the daily loss floor and the maximum loss floor as account balances. On a $50,000 evaluation with a 5% daily limit, your floor today is $47,500. On the 10% maximum, the account dies at $45,000. Those two numbers are the whole game; the profit target takes care of itself.
Once you are trading with us, both floors are printed in dollars at the top of your dashboard, together with how much room you have left today and in total, so there is nothing to calculate while a position is open.
Step 2 — pick a risk per trade you can survive.
Your risk per trade decides how many losses in a row the account absorbs. Everything else — strategy, session, instrument — is secondary to this one number.
| Risk per trade | Losses survived (10% max DD) | Wins needed for 10% | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.25% | 40 in a row | ~40 wins at 1:1 | Slowest, almost impossible to breach |
| 0.5% | 20 in a row | ~20 wins at 1:1 | The sweet spot for most traders |
| 1% | 10 in a row | ~10 wins at 1:1 | Workable with a proven edge |
| 2% | 5 in a row | ~5 wins at 1:1 | A normal losing streak ends the account |
| 5% | 2 in a row | ~2 wins at 1:1 | Gambling — one bad session is fatal |
Simplified at 1:1 reward-to-risk and ignoring compounding. Model your own numbers in the drawdown simulator.
Step 3 — cap the day, not just the trade.
Almost every failed challenge dies inside one session. Set a hard daily stop of two losing trades — around 1% of the account at 0.5% risk — and close the platform when you hit it. A daily drawdown breach is permanent on most firms; a missed session is not. Because there is no time limit on any MixFunded program, walking away costs you nothing but a day.
Step 4 — trade fewer things, better.
One or two instruments, one session, one setup. Traders who fail usually take twelve trades a day across eight symbols with no shared thesis. Pick the pair whose behaviour you already know, keep a journal of every entry reason, and let the sample build. News trading stays allowed here, but holding through a high-impact release with a wide stop is the fastest way to give back a week — check the economic calendar first.
Step 5 — pass cheaply, then scale.
The professional route is to prove the strategy on the smallest cash outlay available and only scale once rewards are landing. On Pay After Passing you pay $5 for a $50,000 evaluation and the $150 activation fee is only billed if you pass, so a failed attempt costs $5 rather than a few hundred. The trade-off is a tighter 3% daily and 8% maximum drawdown, which is exactly why Step 2 matters.
After the first reward lands, confirm it yourself on the public payout ledger — every transfer is published with its blockchain transaction ID — then size up.
A four-week plan that works.
- Week 1 — 0.25% risk, one instrument, journal every trade. Goal: no breaches.
- Week 2 — 0.5% risk if week 1 was disciplined. Two trades a day maximum.
- Week 3 — same size, add the second instrument only if the first is profitable.
- Week 4 — no changes. Let the target arrive; stop trading the day it does.