Daily Loss Limits and Profit Targets

An evaluation has one rule that pays you and two that can end you. The profit target sets the finish line; the daily loss limit and the overall drawdown decide whether you reach it.

The profit target

The target is the profit you must reach to clear the evaluation, quoted against the account size. It is a ceiling on how long you can take, not a deadline in itself — most futures programmes no longer run a hard time limit, but many do require a minimum number of trading days, so hitting the target in one lucky session rarely finishes the job.

Lark Funding: Rules differ by programme and change often — open the firm's own plan page and read the current terms against what you just read here.

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The daily loss limit

The daily limit caps how much you may lose in a single session. Firms measure it in one of two ways: from your balance at the session open, or as a floor on equity that includes open, unrealised losses. The second version is much stricter — a position that is temporarily deep underwater can breach it before you ever close the trade.

Breaching the daily limit usually ends the attempt outright, not just the day. Treat the published number as the hard failure line and set your own stop well inside it.

How the two limits interact

The daily limit is almost always the rule that ends an account, because it is reachable in a single bad session while the overall drawdown takes several. The practical consequence: your position size should be derived from the daily limit, and your patience from the target.

Aqua Futures: Rules differ by programme and change often — open the firm's own plan page and read the current terms against what you just read here.

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Worked example

A 50,000 account with a 3,000 profit target, a 2,000 overall drawdown and a 1,000 daily loss limit.

Set a personal daily stop at 500 — half the published limit. Now two bad days in a row still leave the account alive.
Risk 125 per trade, so a losing day is four trades, not one. On MES that is a handful of points; on ES the same risk is one quarter of the contracts.
To clear 3,000 you need roughly six clean 500-days across the required minimum trading days. That is a realistic plan, and it never requires a single oversized trade.

Flip it around: risking 500 per trade makes the published daily limit two losing trades away, and the whole evaluation four. That is not a strategy, it is a coin toss with a fee.

Common mistakes

Trading right up to the published daily limit instead of a self-imposed fraction of it.
Ignoring whether the limit is measured on balance or on equity — that difference decides whether an open trade can fail you.
Increasing size after a green day, so one red day erases a week.
Chasing the target near the end and breaching the daily limit on the last leg.
Forgetting the minimum-trading-day requirement and assuming the target alone finishes the evaluation.

Before you buy

Read the daily limit, the target and the drawdown model together — they only make sense as a set — and check the payout rules that apply after you pass.

Futures firms we cover

Every firm below publishes its own current rules and pricing. Use this page as the checklist and the firm's site as the source of truth.

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