Profit Target
The amount of profit you need to make to pass an evaluation — the finish line, and usually the easiest part of the challenge to plan for.
The profit target is the net profit you must reach to pass an evaluation. Hit it while respecting the risk rules and the account converts to funded. On futures evaluations, targets commonly land somewhere around 6–10% of the account size, though it varies by firm and account.
The target is the part traders obsess over, and it’s usually the part that takes care of itself. Almost nobody fails an evaluation because they couldn’t make money — they fail because they broke a loss rule on the way there. So the smart way to read a profit target is as a budget problem, not a speed problem.
Work backwards. On a $50,000 account with a $3,000 target and $2,500 of drawdown:
| Daily risk | Days you can be wrong before you’re out | Net needed per winning day (over 15 days) |
|---|---|---|
| $250 | 10 | ~$300 |
| $500 | 5 | ~$400 |
| $1,000 | 2 | ~$650 |
The $250-a-day trader has ten chances to be wrong. The $1,000-a-day trader has two. Both are chasing the same $3,000. One of them will still be trading in week three.
A second useful ratio: compare the target to the drawdown. A $3,000 target against $2,500 of drawdown means you must make more than you’re allowed to lose — so a strategy needs a positive expectancy, not just a good week. This relationship (sometimes expressed as a profit-target-to-drawdown ratio) is one of the cleanest ways to judge how demanding an evaluation really is.
See Prop Firm Challenges Explained for the full playbook, and compare targets across firms in our directory.