A funded-account trading plan fixes five things before the session starts: what you trade, when you trade it, how much you risk per trade, what stops you for the day, and how each number relates to your firm's drawdown limit, consistency target and flatten time. Written that way, the rules that end an account cannot be broken by accident, because every number derives from the firm's published limits.
A funded plan differs from a retail plan in one respect: risk is sized against the drawdown buffer, not the account balance. On an account with a $50,000 nominal balance and a $2,000 maximum loss limit, risking 1% of the balance is $500, which is 25% of the buffer and four losing trades from a closed account, while 10% of that buffer is $200 and survives ten. Daily loss limit, maximum trades and maximum size then follow arithmetically from that per-trade figure.
What goes in a funded-account trading plan?
Nine lines, each a number or a named condition: instrument, session, setup, risk per trade, stop rule, maximum size, daily loss limit, daily profit rule, and the rules for changing the plan. Anything that cannot be checked against the screen at 9:45am is commentary.
Name the instrument and the session specifically, as in "MES, 8:30am to 11:00am CT", not "index futures in the morning". Fifty trades in one product during one session support a conclusion; fifty spread across four products and three sessions support none. The window also has to sit inside the firm's flatten deadline: Topstep's Express Funded Account rules require all positions closed by 3:10 PM CT or the product's market close, whichever comes first, a hard input to the choice between regular and extended trading hours.
Define the setup so another trader could mark the same entries without you. "Pullback in an uptrend" cannot be journaled, because nothing ever fails to qualify after the fact.
How much should I risk per trade?
Risk a fixed fraction of the drawdown buffer, meaning the live distance between your equity and the level at which the firm closes the account, rather than a fraction of the nominal balance. The nominal figure is not your capital and is not what the firm measures: Topstep publishes Max Loss Limits of $2,000, $3,000 and $4,500 on its $50K, $100K and $150K accounts, and the buffer is the distance from today's equity down to that level.
Ten straight losses is not an academic worry. Assume a 40% win rate for illustration: a specific run of ten losses has probability 0.60^10 = 0.6%, roughly 1 in 165, which shows up over a few hundred trades. A fraction near 10% of the buffer survives that run; a fraction near 25% does not.
Recompute the buffer each session, because it moves. Under intraday trailing drawdown the liquidation level follows peak equity including unrealized gains, so a spike you never banked raises the floor permanently, which is the mechanical difference between trailing, end-of-day and static drawdown. The 10% used here is illustrative, not an established optimum; general mechanics are in position sizing on a funded account.
How do I turn a stop into a contract count?
Place the stop where structure says the trade is wrong, then solve for size: contracts = dollar risk / (stop distance in points x the contract multiplier, the dollars each point is worth). Sizing first and fitting the stop to it puts the stop where price has no reason to respect it, which is why stop placement comes before sizing.
The chain runs in one direction: chart structure sets the stop distance, the drawdown buffer sets the dollar risk, the two together produce the contract count, and the firm's position-size cap trims it. Firms publish a maximum size per account tier, and many count micro contracts at a fraction of a full-size contract, so read your own scaling plan before assuming the number you computed is the number you can send.
Worked on Micro E-mini S&P 500 (MES) at $5 per index point, illustrative: with $200 of risk and an 8-point structural stop, each contract costs 8 x $5 = $40, so the size is $200 / $40 = 5 MES. A 20-point stop costs $100 per contract and gives 2 MES. The full-size E-mini (ES) is $50 per point, so that same 8-point stop costs $400 on a single contract, double the risk line, which makes one ES an illegal size under this plan.
What daily loss limit should I set?
Set a personal daily loss limit strictly below the firm's, because yours is set at intended prices while the firm's is enforced at execution prices, and slippage, gaps and commissions land on the wrong side. Topstep publishes daily loss limit parameters of $1,000, $2,000 and $3,000 for its $50K, $100K and $150K accounts.
Illustrative choice on the $50K account: 60% of the firm's $1,000 gives a personal limit of $600, exactly three full losing trades at $200, leaving $1,000 - $600 = $400 of cushion, so an exit that slips $399 worse than planned still lands inside the firm's number. Maximum trades falls out of the same arithmetic: $600 / $200 = 3 losses, so a cap of 4 trades makes the worst realistic session three stops and a scratch.
Every figure here comes from a named firm's published rules at the time of writing, and firms revise limits without notice. Read your own rule page and write those numbers into the plan.
Should I set a daily profit stop or let winners run?
A daily profit stop is genuinely contested. For it: a capped best day keeps the consistency ratio inside the firm's threshold and prevents giving back a day already won. Against it: a fixed dollar stop truncates the right tail, removing the outsized days that pay for the losing ones. Treat it as a compliance and give-back tool rather than a profitability improvement: set it if your firm's consistency rule binds or your journal shows recurring give-back, and leave it out otherwise.
How do I keep the plan inside the consistency rule?
Write your firm's consistency percentage into the plan as a maximum-day figure in dollars, because a consistency rule (a cap on how much of your profit may come from a single day) can block a pass or a payout on an account that never came near its drawdown limit. Read the denominator carefully, because it changes by stage. Topstep requires the single best day in the Trading Combine to stay at or below 50% of the profit target, which caps the best day at $1,500 against a $3,000 target, while its Express Funded Account measures largest day divided by total net profit and requires 40% or below for payout eligibility, with a published example of $3,600 / $9,500 = 37.9%. My Funded Futures sets 50% on its Rapid and Pro evaluations, computes the cap as half the profit target, exempts the Pro one-day pass, and states that exceeding the figure does not breach the account: the trader trades additional days until the requirement is met.
Exceeding a consistency threshold costs time rather than the account at both firms. Additional profitable days dilute the outsized day until the ratio clears the line, and more time in the market is more exposure to the drawdown limit, which is the real price of one huge session.
Plan the ratio forward. Illustrative, against a 40% payout threshold: a $600 daily profit stop means total net profit must reach $600 / 0.40 = $1,500 before the ratio clears, and a $3,000 run at a $600 maximum day takes at least five profitable days, reading $600 / $3,000 = 20%. Repairing a breach after the fact is slower: a $2,000 best day needs $2,000 / 0.40 = $5,000 of total profit, so a trader sitting on $3,000 owes another $2,000 on other days first. More detail sits in how prop firm consistency rules work.
What does the plan look like on one page?
Six numbers and a session window, each traceable to its source. Values below are illustrative, for a $50,000 account whose buffer stands at $2,000 at the start of the session.
| Parameter | Illustrative value | Where the number comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Session | 8:30 to 11:00 CT, MES only | Chosen window, inside the firm's flatten deadline |
| Risk per trade | $200 | 10% of the current drawdown buffer |
| Max size | 5 MES on an 8-point stop | $200 / (8 x $5), recomputed per trade, under the firm's size cap |
| Daily loss limit | $600 | 60% of the firm's published $1,000, leaving $400 for slippage |
| Max trades | 4 | $600 / $200 = 3 losses, plus one scratch |
| Daily profit stop | $600 | Best day held under the firm's consistency percentage |
How often should I review it, and when can I change it?
Review weekly against a fixed metric set, and change the plan only between sessions, in writing, dated, with a reason, and only after a pre-defined sample such as 30 or 50 trades. Mid-session changes are almost always rationalisations of an open position, the mechanism behind most funded-account discipline failures.
Track six things: expectancy per trade, average R multiple, win rate paired with average win over average loss (neither means anything alone), longest losing streak, largest day as a percentage of period profit, and the lowest buffer level touched. Expectancy on the plan above, using illustrative inputs of a 40% win rate, $400 average wins and $200 average losses, is (0.40 x $400) - (0.60 x $200) = $40 per trade, about $120 of expected value across a 3-trade session against a $600 worst case, and those inputs are assumptions until your own sample produces them. Capture method: the metrics a funded trader's journal should record.
How do I actually stick to it?
Attach a mechanism to every number, because a rule that depends on your mood at 2pm is not a rule. Practical mechanisms: a platform-level daily loss lockout, a broker maximum-position setting, a bracket order attached at entry so the stop exists before price can move, and closing the platform once the daily limit is reached.
Topstep's own tooling is the clearest example, and also the catch. Its Daily Loss Limit flattens open positions, cancels pending orders and blocks new trades until 5 PM CT the next session, and the firm states that triggering it is not a rule violation but a forced break for the rest of that session. The setting is automatic on the Live Funded Account and optional in the Trading Combine and Express Funded Account, so on those account types the trader has to switch on the thing that saves them.
A rule with no mechanism behind it is a preference, and preferences do not survive a losing session.
The honest cost is a lower ceiling. A $600 profit stop and a 4-trade cap will end good days early and cost real money on sessions that were about to run, and the trade is still correct, because a breach ends the account permanently while a smaller winning day only ends the day. Copying the plan across several accounts can worsen it: identical size sent to accounts with different buffers and different consistency clocks can sit inside the limit on one and outside it on another. Scale an enforced plan, never an unfinished one.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a written plan to pass an evaluation, or is that just advice people repeat?
No public dataset shows the breach rate of planned versus unplanned funded traders, because firms do not publish pass or failure statistics and self-reported results are selection-biased. Treat the case as arithmetic rather than evidence: a fixed per-trade risk and a fixed trade cap put a hard ceiling on the worst possible day, and an unwritten approach has no ceiling at all.
Do I need a different plan for the evaluation stage and the funded stage?
Keep one plan and change only the objective line, because the risk denominator is identical at both stages. Evaluations add a profit target and, at many firms, a minimum number of trading days, while funded accounts add payout eligibility conditions, and neither changes how a stop converts into contracts.
Will a trading plan make an unprofitable strategy profitable?
No. A plan controls how fast you lose and how quickly a bad edge becomes visible in the numbers, and it cannot turn negative expectancy positive. Traders who blame discipline for a losing quarter often have a journal that shows the setup itself never had an edge.
What should the plan say about adding to a position or scaling out?
Write adds and partials as a rule that caps total open risk at the per-trade dollar figure, not as a discretionary option. Undefined scaling turns into size increases made under pressure, which is how a plan with correct numbers still produces an oversized loss.
Should the plan include a weekly or monthly loss limit too?
A weekly limit is worth adding once you have enough data to know your typical losing streak, expressed as a percentage of the buffer rather than a dollar figure. Monthly limits often fail to bind on funded accounts, since the drawdown limit tends to be reached first.
Can I increase my risk per trade after a winning streak?
Yes, but only through the plan-change procedure, and the natural mechanism is that risk rises on its own as the buffer grows. Sizing at a fixed percentage of the buffer means a larger buffer produces a larger dollar risk automatically, without a discretionary decision after a good week.
How do I plan around scheduled economic releases?
Write the handling rule into the session line, either as a flat prohibition on holding through the release or as a defined flat-and-reenter window. Leaving it undefined means the decision gets made under time pressure with a position open, which is the worst available moment.
Should I rewrite the plan after failing an evaluation?
Rewrite only the parameter that actually failed, identified from the journal, not the whole document. A failure caused by size on one outsized trade is a sizing and enforcement problem, and replacing the setup definition because of it discards the only sample you have.
Is the plan worth writing if I only trade a few times a week?
Yes, and arguably more, because a small sample takes far longer to produce a readable result when the rules keep shifting. Low frequency also means the sample size that triggers a plan change should be counted in trades, never in weeks.