The map of native lockouts

Tradovate's Risk Settings let you set your own daily and weekly profit targets and loss limits inside the platform. Profit and loss is netted in real time (all fees and commissions included) over a session that runs 5:00 PM to 3:45 PM Central, Sunday through Friday.

When a limit is hit the platform closes open positions, cancels working orders, and blocks new positions until the next session — 5:00 PM Central the same day for daily limits, or 5:00 PM Central the following Sunday for weekly limits. The same panel also carries a Max Position Size cap and a Products Permitted list.

By default you can lift a limit yourself — raise the number or disable it. The deliberate-discipline option is 'Lock Risk Settings if Trading Locked': once enabled and the limit hits, the settings can't be changed until the session ends, and Tradovate reps can't unlock it for you either. Revocable by default, irreversible by choice — that opt-in is the whole point.

Two honest caveats. These are liquidation triggers, not guaranteed caps — slippage can carry the fill past your number, and a $0 setting means instant liquidation. And they don't apply to evaluation accounts: Risk Settings work only on live and demo Tradovate Brokerage accounts, so on a prop eval you defer to the firm.

Risk Settings live in your NinjaTrader Account Dashboard (Settings > Accounts > Risk Settings). You set daily and/or weekly profit targets and loss limits; when a limit is reached the platform closes all open positions, cancels working orders, and blocks new positions until the next session.

Sessions reset at 5:00 PM Central the same day for daily limits, or 5:00 PM Central the following Sunday for weekly limits. It's a platform control on your own NinjaTrader Live or Demo (Simulation) accounts.

By default these are revocable — toggle a limit off or edit the value any time. The deliberate-discipline move is the opt-in 'Prevent Changes When Trading is Locked': once a limit locks you, your Risk Settings also lock until 4:00 PM Central, and NinjaTrader support won't unlock them for you. That's the lock you deliberately can't revoke — the whole teach-not-lock point.

Two honest caveats. The loss limits are liquidation triggers, not guaranteed loss caps — slippage can push the fill past your number. And these platform Risk Settings are for your own NinjaTrader brokerage/sim accounts; on a prop-firm account NinjaTrader tells you to contact your prop firm provider directly.

R|Trader Pro (Rithmic's platform, used on Apex accounts) lets you configure Auto Liquidate Criteria: right-click the account > Auto Liquidate Criteria. Because it's a platform feature you set yourself, Apex disclaims responsibility for it as third-party software.

There are five triggers you can set: (1) a Minimum Account Balance floor; (2) a Percentage of Cash on Hand Lost; (3) a fixed Loss Limit; (4) a Trailing Minimum Account Balance that ratchets up as your balance grows (Account Balance − Liquidate Threshold); and (5) a Limited Trailing Minimum that stops ratcheting past a Max Min.

The trailing option is the subtle one: when you're up, the floor rises with you, so giving the gains back liquidates you. Apex's own example — Max Daily Loss $1,000, profit $2,000, balance falls back to +$1,000 — trips the auto-liquidation at the trailing minimum.

You set these yourself; there's no firm-frozen or irreversible variant documented on this page, so — unlike Tradovate's or NinjaTrader's opt-in freeze — we don't claim one here.

Topstep's Personal Daily Loss Limit (PDLL) is the flagship example of a lock done right — because it hands the trader BOTH a revocable version and an irreversible one, on purpose.

You can add a PDLL in Risk Settings whenever you like, even if you didn't set one at purchase. When the limit hits, you pick what happens: keep trading, liquidate, or liquidate and get locked out for the session.

By default a manual PDLL can be adjusted or removed. But you can also choose to freeze your settings for the day — after which you can't raise the limit to keep trading, no matter how much you want to. Choosing the irreversible option BEFORE you're tilted is the whole discipline move.

A separate purchase-set DLL behaves differently: it isn't removable, and it carries from the evaluation to your Express Funded account after you pass.

FundedNext lets you pause your own CFD account: it completely halts trading and blocks any new position. Unlike the locks above, it isn't triggered by a loss — it's a deliberate walk-away switch.

You can unpause at any time yourself from your Account Overview. If FundedNext pauses your account instead (for operational or review reasons), only FundedNext can lift that. So who did the pausing decides who can undo it.

It's a one-time-per-account-lifetime feature, which makes it a considered break rather than a habit — spend it on the day you really need to step away.

The5ers' Daily Pause is enforced by the firm, not switched on by you. It's built as loss protection: when the day's level is reached, it closes your open trades and disables the account until the next trading day.

The level is measured from midnight 00:00 GMT+3, taken from whichever is higher of your balance or your equity — so a green start can raise the bar the pause is measured against.

Because it's firm-controlled and reopens on the next trading day, it is not a mid-day off switch. It applies on specific programs, not every account.

Separate from the trader-set PDLL, Topstep's Risk Team can set a Risk Lock-In level on a funded account — a floor beneath your gains.

If your Net P&L drops below that floor, the account is liquidated and locked for the rest of the day, resuming the next trading day at 5:00 PM Central Time.

This one is not yours to lift. It's the firm-controlled counterpart to the PDLL, and it's why “who sets it” matters as much as what it does.

It's worth showing where a native lock ISN'T. FTMO's Maximum Daily Loss is a limit your equity can't drop below at any time; cross it and the rule is violated.

The firm's own lesson describes it as a pass/fail rule — it does not describe an automatic lockout, forced position close, or auto-flatten. Enforcement is the rule being failed, not the platform stopping you.

That's the useful distinction: a firm RULE tells you the line; a native LOCK acts at the line. If you want the account stopped for you, you have to bring your own discipline (or a platform lock like Tradovate's) — the rule alone won't do it.

MyFundedFutures doesn't use a daily drawdown at all. Instead it has a single Max EOD (End of Day) Drawdown, set at 3% generically (the 50K account is 4% = $2,000). The trailing EOD line locks in once you're up — at $100 plus the initial starting balance.

The honest part traders miss: even though it's an End-of-Day line, it's enforced on open equity intraday. If an open position dips your account below the minimum balance, the evaluation fails then — you don't get to close back above it by end of day.

So this isn't a native self-lock you switch on; it's a firm rule with a hard liquidation edge. Like FTMO's daily loss above, it defines the line — but here open-equity enforcement means the line bites intraday, not just at settlement.