Most prop-firm rule pages read like small print. Ours are enforced by software, identically for every trader, so there is no reason not to explain them like a human being. Here is every rule that governs a Drift Fund account, and the reasoning behind each one.
The profit target: 10%
Reach +10% on your account balance and you pass. On the 2-Step challenge the target is 10% in each phase. There is no time limit — the target waits for you, not the other way round.
The daily loss limit: 4%
Your equity may not fall more than 4% below where it stood at 00:00 UTC that day. Equity includes open positions, so floating losses count. The limit resets every midnight UTC.
Why equity and not just closed trades? Because floating risk is real risk. A limit that ignored open positions would let one oversized trade quietly carry more risk than a week of normal trading.
The maximum drawdown: 6%
Your overall floor. On 1-Step challenges it trails your peak equity — every new high lifts the floor, and it never comes back down. On 2-Step and funded accounts it is fixed below your starting balance.
The trailing version surprises people, so here is the honest arithmetic: if you are up 8% on a 1-Step account, you no longer have 6% of room below your starting balance — you have 6% of room below your peak. Protecting an open profit is a decision you make, not a feature we provide.
The per-trade cap: 2%
No single position may lose more than 2% of your equity, and positions in the same instrument are combined — splitting one oversized idea across three orders does not reset the cap.
The practical consequence is a sizing formula worth memorising:
maximum size = (2% of equity) ÷ (distance from entry to stop)
If your stop sits 4% away from entry, the rule fires long before the stop is reached — the position could never survive its own stop-loss. Choose the stop first, then let the stop choose your size.
The stop-loss rule: 5 minutes
Every position needs a stop-loss within 5 minutes of opening, and a position may never be closed before a stop was ever set on it. Both directions of the rule exist for the same reason: an account with unprotected positions is not demonstrating risk management, which is the one skill a funded account is supposed to prove.
High-impact news: ±5 minutes
No positions held through the window from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a high-impact economic event — and yes, that includes positions opened earlier and held into the window, and it applies to every instrument, including crypto. A US CPI print moves Bitcoin too. The calendar of restricted events is in your portal.
Minimum activity
Trade on at least 5 separate days before passing, and never leave the account with no trades for 30 consecutive days.
Consistency: best day ≤ 40%
No single day may contribute more than 40% of your winning days' profit. This one is a gate, not a breach — it never closes your account; it only delays passing or withdrawing until your profit is spread across more days. One lucky day is luck; the same edge across ten days is skill, and skill is what gets funded.
What happens when a rule is hit
The account closes automatically, at the moment of the violation, by the same engine for everyone. There is no review queue deciding your fate and no discretion in either direction — which also means that when you pass, nobody second-guesses that either.
Every rule above is enforced in real time and shown live in your dashboard — the Daily loss and Max drawdown bars update tick by tick, so you always know exactly how much room you have.
Read the complete rule book at driftfund.io/rules.