Clearing an evaluation, step by step

How to use these playbooks

The three playbooks below map to the order you should actually make the decisions in. Start with the one that decides the result: passing the drawdown rule, because the cap fails more attempts than the target does and the sizing maths is the whole game. Then settle the timetable with choosing a holding clock — an evaluation runs over days to weeks, and matching your model to that window matters more than raw speed. Finally, the funded-trader mindset is the one that keeps the first two intact when a session goes against you.

None of them assume you take anything on trust. Each is built so you could apply it on any program, with any instrument, and reach your own result; the site simply argues that a graded, drawdown-aware method comes out the other side with the account intact. Where a playbook refers to a specific rule — the drawdown, the consistency limit, the grade — it links through to the matching wall so you can go as deep as you want.

What these playbooks deliberately do not do

They do not rank prop firms, they do not hand out discount codes, and they do not chase the latest “funded in a week” promise. All three reward whoever markets hardest, which is the opposite of what a candidate needs. Instead each playbook hands you a routine you can run, because a habit you own outlives any firm-specific tip that goes stale the moment the program changes its rules. A trader who has internalised survivable sizing can pass an evaluation this site has never seen; that portable discipline is the whole point.

The mistake these playbooks are meant to prevent

The most common and most expensive error a candidate makes is treating the profit target as the objective and the drawdown cap as a detail. It is the reverse. The target is what you are paid to reach; the cap is what the firm is actually testing, and it is the wall that ends accounts. By the time a trader notices that one oversized position has tripped the drawdown, the fee is gone and the evaluation is over — there is no recovering from a breach. Each playbook here is structured to move you from chasing the target to respecting the cap, because the trader who survives long enough almost always reaches the target, while the trader who chases it frequently does not survive. That shift is the whole value of the cluster.