What rules does a futures prop firm evaluation have, and how does each one work?

A futures prop firm evaluation is decided by two numbers: a profit target you have to reach and a trailing drawdown you must not close below. Around those two sit a minimum number of trading days, a cap on how many contracts you can hold, in some cases a consistency rule, and a short list of trades that are prohibited whatever your balance says. Every other detail is a variation on those.

The rest of this page takes them one at a time, in the order they tend to matter, and shows how each one is set on the Phoenix Trader Funding account families Classic, Daily, Spark and Merit.

The two numbers that decide a pass

A profit target is the gain, measured from the starting balance, that an evaluation account has to reach before it qualifies for funding. It is fixed for the size of account you take, so a larger account carries a larger target, and it is the only number in the evaluation you are trying to reach rather than avoid.

A trailing drawdown is a loss floor that follows your balance upward as you make profit, so the amount you are allowed to lose is measured from your best balance rather than from where you started. Closing below it ends the evaluation. On Classic, Daily and Spark evaluations the floor is calculated at the end of the day, which means it moves once, on the closing balance, and an intraday dip that recovers before the close never touches it. The floor also stops rising once it reaches your starting balance, so from that point on it never climbs any higher. There is a longer walk through the arithmetic in our answer on how a trailing drawdown moves.

Two details catch people out. Profit above the target when you pass does not carry into the funded account, so trading far past the number buys nothing except more time exposed to the floor. And the target is the finish line, not a scoreboard: reaching it is what starts the review.

Merit is built differently. It has no profit target and no trailing floor. It carries a static total loss limit instead, and after a 30 calendar day assessment a human decides on funding by the quality of the trading rather than the size of the profit. Because there is no target, there is no pass mark either, only approval or not.

The daily loss limit, and the accounts that skip it

A daily loss limit is a cap on how much an account may lose inside a single trading session, separate from the overall floor. Many traders expect one on every evaluation they take.

Classic, Daily and Spark evaluations carry no daily loss limit at all. A single bad session cannot end one of those evaluations on its own; only the trailing floor can. Merit is the one family whose evaluation does carry a daily limit, set at 25 percent and calculated dynamically.

Rules about time: minimum days, deadlines and inactivity

A minimum trading days rule is the number of days on which you must actually place a trade before a pass can count. It exists so that a single lucky session cannot qualify an account.

The minimum is short. A Classic or Daily evaluation needs two trading days, and a Spark needs one. The days do not have to be consecutive, and nothing asks you to trade every day.

Classic and Spark evaluations carry no time limit, so a slow week or a month spent waiting for the right market is not a failure. The one inactivity rule at the evaluation stage belongs to Spark: a Spark challenge is disabled after 90 calendar days with no trade at all. Merit runs on a fixed window instead, a 30 calendar day assessment with one attempt for the life of the account.

Contract limits and the consistency rule

A contract limit is the largest position an evaluation account may hold at once, usually stated as a number of mini contracts or a larger number of micros. The two figures are alternatives, not a combined total: you can hold the minis or the micros, not both stacked together.

On a Spark or Daily evaluation the full size is available from the first day, with no scaling plan to work through. A Classic evaluation scales: it opens at a smaller size and unlocks more contracts as profit builds. Size beyond the published plan is available only on request, after a review of your trades.

A consistency rule is a limit on how much of your total profit any single trading day may account for. It stops a pass from resting on one outsized session. Classic and Daily evaluations carry a 50 percent consistency rule, with a one-point cushion so that it is enforced at 51 percent rather than failing a trader who lands exactly on 50. Spark and Merit evaluations carry no consistency rule. How the share is calculated, and how it changes once an account is funded, is covered in our answer on consistency rules.

What you can trade, and the few things you cannot

The strategy rules are where evaluations differ most from one program to another, and on the Phoenix Trader Funding families they are open. News trading is allowed on Classic, Daily, Spark and Merit evaluations, including tier one releases such as FOMC, CPI and NFP. Scalping is allowed with no minimum holding time. Averaging into a position is allowed, and so is copying trades between your own accounts. Trading through a VPN or a VPS is allowed and monitored.

Three things are prohibited on every one of those families: holding a position overnight or over the weekend, hedging one account against another, and high frequency or automated bot execution. A rule violation of this kind is not the same as a loss: it can end an evaluation that is comfortably in profit, and a violation during the challenge means the account is denied funding.

The tradable market is CME, CBOT, COMEX and NYMEX futures only. Gold and the other metals are open across the board.

What happens when the rules are met, or broken

Reaching the target inside every other rule starts a review, and the review is rarely the slow part: 70 to 80 percent clear immediately and the rest within a few hours. Identity verification and the funded contract follow, and they take a few minutes, a few hours at most. On a Spark, the activation step falls due in that same window, and if it is not settled the evaluation is void.

If the floor is what you reach instead, the evaluation is over, and a Classic, Daily or Spark evaluation can be reset and run again. What a reset restores and when it is free are set out in our answer on evaluation resets. A Merit cannot be reset at any stage.

Every Classic, Daily and Spark evaluation also comes with a free practice account on the same parameters, with unlimited free resets and no path to funding. It is a free way to learn how a trailing floor feels against your own trading before the rules count.

Each of the rules on this page is a dial, and Phoenix Labs exists to test what happens when one of them is set differently. The rules every Labs experiment traded under, and what became of it, are kept permanently in the Phoenix Labs experiment archive.

Common follow-up questions

Can a single losing day fail a Classic, Daily or Spark evaluation?

Not on its own. None of those three evaluations carries a daily loss limit, so a bad session only ends the evaluation if the end of day balance closes below the trailing floor. Merit is the family whose evaluation does carry a daily limit.

Do the minimum trading days have to be in a row?

No. The minimum counts days on which you actually placed a trade, and they can be spread out however you like. A Classic or Daily evaluation needs two such days and a Spark needs one before a pass can count.

Is there a deadline to pass a Classic or Spark evaluation?

No. Classic and Spark evaluations carry no time limit, so waiting out a slow market costs you nothing in rule terms. The only clock is on Spark, whose challenge is disabled after 90 calendar days without a single trade.

Can I trade the CPI or FOMC release during an evaluation?

Yes. News trading is allowed on Classic, Daily, Spark and Merit, including tier one releases such as FOMC, CPI and NFP. What stays prohibited is holding a position overnight or over the weekend, whatever the news calendar looks like.

Can I add to a losing position during an evaluation?

Yes. Averaging into a position is allowed on Classic, Daily, Spark and Merit, as long as the total stays inside the contract limit for your account size. Hedging that position on a second account is prohibited.

Does a breached rule always mean the evaluation is over?

Closing below the trailing floor ends it, and a prohibited trade means the account is denied funding. A Classic, Daily or Spark evaluation can then be reset and run again; a Merit cannot be reset.