Topstep’s trailing drawdown, explained with the actual numbers
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.
Topstep calls it the Maximum Loss Limit, or MLL. Everyone else calls it the trailing drawdown, and it is the rule that ends more accounts than any other. Not because it is complicated. Because people read it once, think they understand it, and then find out on a Tuesday afternoon that they didn’t.
Here is the whole thing in one sentence: your account has a floor, the floor follows your highest end-of-day balance upward at a fixed distance, it never comes back down, and if your balance touches it at any moment, including with an open trade, the account is done.
The numbers
| Account | Maximum Loss Limit | Locks at $0 once your balance reaches |
|---|---|---|
| 50K | $2,000 | +$2,000 |
| 100K | $3,000 | +$3,000 |
| 150K | $4,500 | +$4,500 |
On a 50K Express Funded Account you start at $0 with a floor at −$2,000. Close the day at +$800 and the floor moves to −$1,200. Close the next day at +$300, so you gave back $500, and the floor stays at −$1,200. It only knows about your best close. Losing days are invisible to it.
“End of day” is the part that fools people
The floor updates at the end of each trading day. It is monitored every second. Those are two different things and the gap between them is where accounts go to die.
Say your best close so far is +$800, floor at −$1,200. Today you are up $600 at lunch. The floor has not moved, it will not move until tonight. So the room you have right now is from +$1,400 down to −$1,200, which is $2,600. Feels great. Then you hold a loser into the afternoon, it runs, and net P&L, which includes that open trade, prints −$1,200. Liquidated. It does not matter that the trade might have come back. It does not matter that you were up $600 earlier. The monitor saw the number, and the number was the floor.
In our experience the account-ending trade is almost never the first loss of the day. It is the third one, taken bigger, with the floor a lot closer than the trader thinks because they did the mental arithmetic from the morning’s balance and never redid it.
The lock
Good news exists. On an Express Funded Account the floor stops rising once it reaches $0, which happens when you have banked a full MLL of profit. A 50K trader who has closed at +$2,000 or better now has a permanent floor at $0 and can, in principle, give back everything above it without losing the account. On a Combine the lock is at your starting balance, same idea.
After your first payout the floor goes to $0 permanently regardless of where it was. That is one of the quieter arguments for taking the first payout as early as the rules allow.
What breaching actually does
- Trading Combine: liquidated for the day and the account is no longer eligible for funding. You start a new one.
- Express Funded Account: closed. Permanently. The profits in it are not yours unless they were already paid out.
Positions close with market orders, so the final balance can land a few ticks below the limit. The breach is the breach either way.
How to not do this
Honestly, the rule is fine. It is the arithmetic that is the problem, because the number you need is not on your chart. You need: highest close so far, minus the MLL, and then how far today’s net P&L, open trades included, sits above that. Three numbers, and they change every tick.
Do it by hand before the open and write it on a sticky note. Or let something do it for you. Tapeworm’s Altimeter shows the distance to the floor as a live number next to the distance to the daily loss limit, so the question “can I afford this trade” has an answer you can read instead of one you have to work out while the market is moving.
Questions people search for
Does the Topstep trailing drawdown count open trades?
Yes. The Maximum Loss Limit is monitored in real time on net P&L, realized plus unrealized. If an open position takes your net balance to the limit for even a moment, the account is liquidated.
When does the Topstep Maximum Loss Limit stop trailing?
On an Express Funded Account it locks at $0 once your balance has gained the full MLL amount (for example $2,000 on a 50K). On a Trading Combine it locks when it reaches your starting balance. It never moves down.
What happens if I hit the Maximum Loss Limit?
Positions are closed by market order. A Combine is liquidated for the day and becomes ineligible for funding. An Express Funded Account is closed permanently.