Depending on which firm publishes and how it counts, between 5% and 14% of traders pass an evaluation. Around 7% of everyone who starts one ever receives a payout.
Those numbers get quoted constantly, usually to sell something. On their own they explain nothing. The useful question is not how many fail, it is where exactly the account dies, and there the published data is unambiguous.
Accounts do not die where traders think they do
Ask a trader why challenges fail and most will say the profit target was too hard, or the time limit too short. The data says otherwise.
Roughly 60 to 70% of failed evaluations end on a daily-loss or maximum-loss breach, not on an expiry with the target unmet. In first-phase failures specifically, about 71% are daily drawdown breaches.
Most traders do not fail because their strategy does not work. They fail because they hit a loss limit before their strategy had room to work.
That distinction matters, because the two problems have opposite solutions. A strategy problem is fixed by studying markets. A loss-limit problem is fixed by arithmetic, and can be fixed this week.
The first week does most of the damage
The majority of failures happen in the opening days, before the account has produced enough trades for any edge to show. This is the shape of a sizing error, not of a bad method: a method that loses money loses it gradually, while a position too large for the loss window removes the account in one session.
It is also the point where a trader is most likely to be trading to get started rather than to a plan. The account is new, the fee has just been paid, and doing nothing feels like waste. Statistically, doing nothing on day one is one of the better opening moves.
The arithmetic almost nobody does
A trader who buys a $100,000 evaluation naturally thinks of it as a $100,000 account. For risk purposes it is nothing of the sort.
What matters is the distance to the floor. With a maximum loss of 8%, the account survives an $8,000 drawdown and no more. With a daily loss of 4%, a single session has $4,000 of room. That is your real account size, and it is roughly twenty times smaller than the number on the invoice.
| Risk per trade | Losing trades before the daily limit | Before the account closes |
|---|---|---|
| 2% of balance | 2 | 4 |
| 1% of balance | 4 | 8 |
| 0.5% of balance | 8 | 16 |
| 0.25% of balance | 16 | 32 |
Figures shown on a $100,000 Builder account, 4% daily and 8% maximum loss. Read the first row honestly: at 2% risk per trade, two ordinary losing trades in a row end your trading day, and four end the account. No strategy survives that, however good it is.
The three behaviours behind the statistics
Publicly reported failure analyses converge on the same three, and none of them are about market knowledge.
- Position size relative to the loss window. The single largest cause. A size that would be reasonable on a personal account is often reckless against an 8% floor.
- Revenge trading. A loss is followed immediately by a larger position intended to recover it. This is the mechanism that turns a bad hour into a closed account.
- Not stopping. The inability to close the platform after a heavy session. The daily loss limit exists precisely because most people cannot do this unaided.
What actually moves the number
- Size from the floor, not from the balance. Decide how many consecutive losses you want to survive, then divide the maximum loss by that number. Eight is a sensible starting point, which puts risk near 1% per trade on a Builder account.
- Know which drawdown model you are under before the first trade. Static is measured from your starting balance and does not move. Trailing follows your highest equity, so a profitable run tightens the floor behind you. They demand different behaviour.
- Set a daily stop below the firm's daily stop. If the rule ends your day at 4%, end it yourself at 2.5%. The rule is a cliff edge; yours is a fence in front of it.
- Trade a free trial first if one is available. The point is not to prove your edge. It is to find out how the rules feel under pressure, before the mistake costs a fee.
- Take a day off after a heavy loss. The data on revenge trading is strong enough to treat this as a rule rather than as advice.
What our own rules do about each of these
We would rather show this than claim to be different.
- No time limit, on any program. A deadline is what turns a patient trader into an impatient one. Minimum trading days exist to measure regularity, not to hurry you: 5 on The Builder, 8 on The Sprinter, none on The Starter.
- Static drawdown on all three programs. Your floor is fixed at the start and never creeps up behind a winning run, on The Builder, The Sprinter and The Starter alike. It is written on the programs page rather than buried in the terms.
- Consistency status visible live in the dashboard. The rule is 40%, 33% or 25% depending on the program, and you can see where you stand at any moment. It should never be discovered at payout time.
- A free trial from $10,000 to $200,000, restartable. Same rules, same dashboard, same engine, no payment method required.
- Every rule published before purchase, versioned and dated. You cannot manage a limit you were not told about.
The honest summary
The 90% figure is real, but it describes risk management far more than it describes skill. The failures cluster in the first week, on loss limits, at position sizes that were never survivable against the floor.
Which is genuinely good news, because that is the part you control before placing a single trade.
