Apex intraday vs EOD drawdown: how each one moves

Apex sells two kinds of evaluation drawdown. The difference is when the floor moves.

• Intraday trailing: the floor rises the moment your peak balance does, open profit included.
• End-of-day (EOD) trailing: the floor rises once a day, from the closing balance.

Both are checked against the account’s value in real time, so a dip during the day counts on either one.

In practice, on intraday a spike in open profit raises the floor straight away, even if the trade then gives it back. On EOD the floor only rises to the level of a day’s close.

Apex’s live help pages refused automated reads, so this guide uses archived copies, dated in Sources. Check Apex’s page before you rely on a number.

The two side by side

	Intraday trailing	EOD trailing
Floor follows	Peak balance, open profit included	Highest closing balance
Floor updates	As it happens	Once a day, 4:59:59 PM ET
Tested against	Live balance	Live balance

Intraday trailing drawdown

• What the floor follows. Apex writes that the drawdown “follows Peak Balance and never moves down”^S1, and that the peak “includes both realized and unrealized gains”^S2. An older Apex page says the same thing differently: the threshold “is based on the highest live value during trades, not on closed trade values”^S4.
• Size. $2,000 on the 50K account on the newer pages^S1,^S2. The older page says $2,500 (see below).
• A touch fails the account. “If at any moment during the session the account balance touches or falls below the Trailing Threshold, all open positions are automatically liquidated and the evaluation is immediately failed.”^S1 Slippage on the liquidation fill “does not change the fact that the threshold was breached”^S1.

EOD trailing drawdown

• When the floor moves. “The EOD Threshold is recalculated once per trading day at 4:59:59 PM ET, based on the account’s closing balance.”^S3
• When it is tested. Not only at the close: “Even though the threshold is calculated at end-of-day, it is enforced in real time.”^S3
• Size. The page says “each account begins with a fixed drawdown amount based on account size”. Its worked example is a $50,000 account with a maximum drawdown of $2,000, which gives an opening EOD threshold of $48,000^S3. It does not list other sizes, so I state only the 50K example.

Where the floor stops

Where the floor stops depends on the platform or account^S2,^S3.

Platform or account	Intraday	EOD
Rithmic and Wealthcharts evaluations	Fixes at $53,000 once the peak reaches $55,000	Fixes at $53,000 once the highest EOD balance closes above $55,000
Tradovate evaluations	“Trails indefinitely with the peak account balance”	“Trails indefinitely with the peak EOD account balance”
Performance Account	Not stated on the pages I read	“Once the EOD Threshold reaches Starting Balance + $100, it stops increasing.” On a 50K EOD account that is $50,100, reached when the highest EOD balance reaches $52,100

Apex’s intraday example reads “Threshold Stop Level = $53.000”^S2.

Daily loss limit is a different rule

Apex’s EOD page separates the two: the daily loss limit “limits how much an account can lose within a single trading day; if it is reached, all open positions are automatically liquidated and trading is paused for the remainder of the day, but the account remains active”. The drawdown threshold is the one that fails an evaluation^S3. The page does not give a daily-loss-limit amount, and Apex’s intraday evaluation page says “No Daily Loss Limit”^S1, so check the rules shown for the account you are buying.

Where Apex’s pages disagree

Apex has published two generations of rule pages, and the two are not the same.

• Size. The older article says a 50K plan “starts at $47,500, which is $2,500 below the initial $50k balance”^S4. The newer pages give $2,000 and a start of $48,000^S1,^S2.
• Lock wording. Apex’s intraday explainer says the threshold fixes when it reaches “an amount equal to the Target Profit balance”, and its own FAQ says “trailing stops once the Intraday Threshold reaches Profit Target Balance + $2,000”^S2. The numbers work out to the same $53,000 floor, but the two sentences point at different things: the floor, and the balance that sets it.

The pages do not say which generation applies to a given account. Ask Apex or read the rules shown at purchase.

If you test a strategy against these rules

Because the floor can rise on open profit, an intraday test needs the account’s equity at every price update, not bar closes. An EOD test needs both: the closing balance of each day for the floor, and live equity for the touch.