Track trailing drawdown live — before it ends your account.
MimikTrader follows a persistent high-water mark on every account, reacts to open losses as they move, and caps how much of a winning day you're allowed to hand back. The number that fails most funded traders, watched in real time.
- Persistent high-water mark that ratchets up and carries across days
- Reacts to floating (unrealized) losses, not just closed trades
- Profit give-back cap on how much of the day's gains an open loss can return
- Max drawdown surfaced as a KPI in your reports, per account
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Trailing drawdown, per account — tracked on your net liquidation.
The real account killer
Drawdown, not a single bad trade, is what busts accounts.
Most funded accounts aren't lost to one catastrophic fill. They're lost to drawdown — the distance between the best your account has ever been worth and where it sits now. A single red trade rarely breaks a rule. A slow bleed from a recent equity peak almost always does.
There are two shapes this takes. Static drawdown measures loss from your starting balance and never moves — cross it and you're done, full stop. Trailing drawdown is the harder one: it measures loss from the highest your account value has reached, and that ceiling follows your gains upward. Make new equity, and the floor you can't fall through rises with it.
That trailing behavior is exactly why traders get caught. You're up on the day, the drawdown line has quietly ratcheted up behind you, and a floating loss on an open position eats into a buffer you thought you had. If you're only watching realized P&L, you never see it coming.
How the tracking works
A high-water mark that only ever goes up.
MimikTrader tracks a persistent high-water mark of each account's net liquidation — cash balance plus open profit and loss. Every price tick that makes a new equity high bumps the mark higher. It never moves down, and it is not reset at the daily rollover: it carries across trading days, so the ceiling you've earned stays earned.
The drawdown itself is simply the gap: high-water mark minus current net liquidation. Because current net liquidation includes open, unrealized P&L, the tracker reacts to a floating loss the moment the position moves against you — not later, when you finally close it. A trailing-drawdown breach fires when that gap reaches your configured maximum.
As a labeled example: say an account peaks at a net liquidation of $52,000 with a $2,000 trailing allowance. The line sits at $50,000. If equity climbs to $53,000, the line ratchets to $51,000 — permanently. A floating loss that drags net liquidation back to $51,000 reaches the limit even if you haven't closed a thing. The tracker is watching the open position, not waiting for the exit.
- High-water mark = highest net liquidation the account has reached
- Ratchets up only — never falls, never resets at day's end
- Drawdown = high-water mark minus current net liquidation
- Includes open P&L, so floating losses count in real time
The high-water mark ratchets up as equity makes new highs.
Protecting a green day
Profit give-back — keep what the day gave you.
Trailing drawdown is one guard against giving profits back. Profit give-back protection is a sharper one, aimed at a specific and painful pattern: you build a solid realized gain early, then an open position in the afternoon quietly erases most of it.
This protection engages only on an open loss, and measures it against a profit base: the greater of the day's realized profit and your Trailing Drawdown amount. By default an open loss may return no more than 30% of that base; with the scale option on, the allowance rises to 50% once the day's realized profit reaches at least twice your Trailing Drawdown amount. The trailing amount anchors this rule even when the trailing rule itself is toggled off — it's there to stop a won day from turning into a lost one on the last trade.
As a labeled example: bank $1,000 in realized profit (with a smaller trailing amount configured), and with a 30% give-back cap a floating loss of more than $300 on an open position trips the rule. You keep the bulk of the day you earned instead of round-tripping it.
When the line is crossed
Tracking, then enforcement — flatten and lock.
Tracking a limit and enforcing it are two halves of the same job. When a trailing-drawdown or profit-give-back limit is breached, MimikTrader doesn't just flag it: new entries stop being accepted, open positions are closed out at the broker, and the account is locked. You get a notification and an activity-log entry naming the rule that tripped, so the record of what happened is never a mystery.
One difference matters here, and we won't gloss it: a trailing-drawdown lock does not self-clear at the daily or weekly reset the way a daily-loss lock does. Because trailing drawdown reflects the account's whole equity history rather than a single session, clearing it takes a manual review rather than waiting for 5:00 PM. That's deliberate — the ceiling it protects is permanent, so lifting the lock is too.
As with every rule on the platform, enforcement never touches your exits. Closing and reducing trades always go through, even while an account is locked. A lock only blocks new opening risk.
In your reports
Max drawdown, measured and reviewable.
Live enforcement keeps you inside the line during the session. Your reports tell you how close you've been running to it over time. Max drawdown is a first-class KPI in MimikTrader's reporting — the deepest peak-to-trough your account has taken across the period you're reviewing, per account.
That's the number that separates a strategy with a real edge from one that only looked good because you hadn't hit the bad stretch yet. A dedicated risk view in the reports puts drawdown alongside your other risk metrics so you can see whether your worst run is trending shallower or deeper — the honest read on whether your risk management is actually improving.
Reporting and analytics are included with the Pro plan ($49.99/mo), and every plan starts with a 7-day free trial. Starter covers copying across your connected accounts; the drawdown tracking and reporting on this page are Pro features, and we'd rather say so plainly.
Max drawdown as a reviewable KPI, per account.
In a live trade
What happens when one account breaks a rule?
One leader trade. Five follower accounts. One breach. Here is what MimikTrader does about it.
Copy group · 1 NQ contract leader trade
After breach event
Account
Firm / size
Status
Day P&L
Account 01
Apex 50K Eval
Active+$420
Account 02
Topstep 50K Funded
Active+$380
Account 03
MFFU 50K Eval
Locked-$1,000
Account 04
Bulenox 100K Eval
Active+$840
Account 05
Tradeify 50K Eval
Active+$420
Step 01
Trade copied across five accounts
You place a trade on the leader account. MimikTrader sends the correct order to each follower based on its copy settings.
Step 02
One account reaches its daily loss limit
Account 03 hits the configured daily loss threshold while the copied position is still live.
Step 03
MimikTrader flattens the affected account
The breached account is closed according to your configured flatten rule.
Step 04
The account is locked
New copied trades are blocked from entering that account until the lock is cleared.
Step 05
Other accounts keep running
Accounts 01, 02, 04, and 05 continue following the copy group because they did not breach their rules.
Step 06
The event is recorded
The fill, breach, flatten action, account lock, and timestamp are written to the trade record.
What the drawdown tracker covers
- Persistent high-water mark on account net liquidation
- Ratchets up only — carries across trading days
- Trailing drawdown measured live against the high-water mark
- Reacts to open (unrealized) losses, not just closed trades
- Profit give-back cap on the day's profit base (realized profit, floored by your trailing amount)
- Auto-flatten and lock on a trailing-drawdown breach
- Trailing-drawdown lock held for manual review, by design
- Closes and reduces never blocked, even under a lock
- Max drawdown as a KPI in your per-account reports
FAQ
Drawdown tracker — common questions
A real-time (intraday) trailing drawdown updates its high-water mark on every price tick and reacts to open, unrealized losses as they happen. An end-of-day variant only re-marks the high-water line at the session close, so intraday swings between closes don't move it. MimikTrader tracks the real-time, mark-to-market version, which reacts to floating losses the moment a position moves against you.
Open positions. The tracker measures current net liquidation as cash plus open P&L, so a floating loss counts toward drawdown in real time — you don't have to close the trade for it to register.
Tracking and enforcement are configured together. When a trailing-drawdown or profit-give-back limit is breached, the account flips to closing-only, flattens at the broker, and locks — automatically. You don't have to watch it or act on it.
No. Unlike a daily-loss lock, which self-clears at the 5:00 PM CT reset, a trailing-drawdown lock is held for a manual review. It reflects the account's whole equity history rather than a single session, so lifting it is a deliberate step, not an automatic one.
Yes. Each connected account carries its own high-water mark and drawdown limit and is tracked independently, so one account's drawdown doesn't affect the tracking on the others in your group.
No — reporting and analytics are Pro-plan features ($49.99/mo). Starter covers copying across your connected accounts. Every plan starts with a 7-day free trial so you can see the max-drawdown KPI on your own data first.
Watch the line before it crosses you.
Trailing drawdown is the number that quietly ends funded accounts. Start a free trial and track it live on yours.
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