Apex trailing drawdown: intraday vs end-of-day, and the $100 lock
Checked against the firm’s published rules on September 14, 2026. Your firm’s dashboard is the record; if it disagrees with this page, it wins.
Apex sells two kinds of account and the difference is entirely about this rule. Pick the wrong one for how you trade and you will lose an account to a trade that was never closed at a loss. That is not a figure of speech. It is the intraday rule working as designed.
The distance
| Account | Trailing drawdown |
|---|---|
| 25K | $1,000 |
| 50K | $2,000 |
| 100K | $3,000 |
| 150K | $4,000 |
The threshold sits that far under your peak balance and only ever moves up.
Intraday: the peak includes open trades
On an intraday trailing account the threshold follows your highest balance at any moment, and “balance” includes unrealized P&L. Go long, watch the trade run $900 in your favour, and the floor has just moved up $900. Now the trade comes back to flat and you close it for nothing. Your balance never changed. Your floor did, permanently.
That is how a trader on a 50K can be liquidated with a net loss of a few hundred dollars: the peak was set by trades that never got booked. The fix is not complicated, but it is unnatural: on an intraday account, a runner you let come back is a real cost, even when the P&L says otherwise.
EOD: recalculated once, enforced always
On an end-of-day account the threshold is worked out once per day at 4:59:59 PM Eastern from the closing balance, trailing the highest close ever. During the session it does not move. But it is still enforced in real time: touch it with an open trade at 10 AM and you are liquidated at 10 AM. So the EOD account forgives intraday spikes in your favour, and forgives nothing else.
This is the same design as Topstep’s Maximum Loss Limit, if you have read that page.
The $100 lock on a Performance Account
Once the threshold reaches your starting balance plus $100, it stops. On a 50K PA the stop level is $50,100, reached when the peak hits $52,100 (start plus drawdown plus $100). From then on the floor is fixed and you can, in principle, give back everything above $50,100 without losing the account.
That lock is the quiet milestone. Traders who get there tend to keep accounts; traders who keep resetting at plus a thousand tend to keep buying evaluations. The safety net for payouts is the same number, which is not a coincidence.
Evaluations are different: Rithmic and WealthCharts evaluations lock when the threshold reaches the profit-target balance ($53,000 on a 50K). Tradovate evaluations do not lock at all, the threshold trails your peak for the life of the evaluation.
On a breach
Positions are closed automatically. An evaluation fails. A Performance Account closes. Fills can land a little below the threshold; the touch is what counts.
The number you need
On an intraday account the question is “how far is my net balance, right now, from my peak minus the drawdown, where the peak includes the best I have been today.” That number changes every tick and on a fast day it is impossible to hold in your head. It is exactly the kind of thing we built Tapeworm to keep on screen, first for Topstep, with Apex following.
Questions people search for
Does unrealized profit raise the Apex trailing threshold?
On an intraday trailing account, yes. The peak balance includes open P&L, so a trade that runs in your favour and comes back raises the floor without ever adding to your balance. On an EOD account the threshold is recalculated once a day from the closing balance.
When does the Apex trailing drawdown stop moving?
On a Performance Account, once the threshold reaches the starting balance plus $100. On a 50K that is $50,100, which happens when the peak reaches $52,100. Rithmic and WealthCharts evaluations lock at the profit-target balance; Tradovate evaluations trail indefinitely.
What happens if I touch the Apex threshold?
All open positions are liquidated. An evaluation fails. A Performance Account closes.