Evaluations: profit targets, minimum days, what actually fails people

The three levers on every evaluation

Nearly every futures evaluation is built from the same three levers: a profit target you must hit, a maximum drawdown you must not breach, and a minimum number of trading days you must complete before you're eligible to pass or get paid out. Firms vary the numbers, the drawdown type, and the extra rules layered on top, but if you understand these three levers you can read any firm's rule sheet in five minutes instead of getting surprised by it three weeks in.

Profit target

The profit target is usually expressed as a flat dollar amount tied to account size — for example, a $50,000 evaluation might require a $3,000 profit target, roughly 6% of the account. Larger accounts often have proportionally similar targets, though some firms scale the percentage down slightly on bigger sizes since the dollar target becomes large in absolute terms. The target is not adjusted for how long it takes you — a trader who hits it in four days and a trader who hits it in twenty-five days both pass, assuming both meet the minimum trading days requirement described below.

Minimum trading days

Minimum trading days exist so firms don't fund someone who got lucky on one outsized trade. A common structure requires 5-10 minimum trading days before you're eligible to pass, meaning you must place at least one qualifying trade on that many separate calendar days — not that you must trade for that many days in a row, and not that you need a minimum number of trades per day. // VERIFY BEFORE LAUNCH A single contract traded for thirty seconds usually counts as satisfying that day's requirement, but read the firm's specific definition of a "trading day," because some require the position to be held a minimum duration or size to count.

What actually fails people — and it's rarely the profit target

Ask any experienced funded trader what fails most evaluation attempts and the answer is almost never "couldn't hit the profit target." It's the drawdown rule, and it's almost always self-inflicted by one of these patterns:

• Revenge sizing. A trader down $800 on a $1,200 max daily loss decides to double size on the next trade to "get it back fast," and one bad fill ends the evaluation instead of just extending the timeline.
• Ignoring the trailing nature of the drawdown. Many evaluations trail the max drawdown up as your account gains, which means an early profit cushion can evaporate faster than traders expect if they don't understand exactly how the trailing threshold moves (covered in full in the next lesson).
• Overtrading to rush the minimum days. Traders who want to "get it over with" take marginal setups just to log a trading day, and marginal setups lose more often than A-grade setups.
• Holding through news or the close without a plan. An unplanned overnight or through-news hold can gap against a position in a way that a well-defined stop would have prevented.

Worked example: sizing to survive the drawdown, not just to hit the target

Suppose you're trading a $50,000 evaluation with a $2,000 maximum trailing drawdown and a $3,000 profit target. You trade MNQ, and your plan uses an 8-point stop. MNQ is $2 per point per contract (0.25 tick = $0.50), so an 8-point stop risks $16 per contract. If you want to risk no more than $200 per trade — 10% of your total drawdown cushion — you could size up to 12 contracts ($200 / $16 = 12.5, rounded down to 12). But sizing to the maximum your risk budget allows on every trade is how traders survive a few losers before they've built any cushion at all; many experienced funded traders start an evaluation risking closer to 2-4% of the max drawdown per trade, not 10%, specifically so a normal losing streak doesn't end the account.

Reading the rule sheet like a contract

Before you pay for any evaluation, find answers to these on the firm's own site: Is the drawdown end-of-day or intraday? Is it trailing or static, and does it stop trailing at a certain point? What exactly counts as a "trading day"? Are there restrictions on holding through news events or overnight? Is there a maximum position size by contract? If a firm's FAQ doesn't answer these clearly, that alone is useful information — the next lesson unpacks the drawdown question in full because it's the one that trips up the most otherwise-competent traders.

Takeaways

Profit targets are usually flat percentages of account size and don't reward speed, so there's no benefit to rushing. Minimum trading days require presence on that many separate days, not a certain number of trades, but firms define "qualifying day" differently, so check the fine print. Evaluations are failed almost entirely by drawdown breaches driven by oversized risk after a losing stretch, not by an inability to reach the profit target itself.