Thunderbolt Legacy is the swing-trading program. If you hold trades across sessions, carry positions overnight, or keep risk open over the weekend, this is the program designed around that style.

It is built around holding positions overnight and over the weekend, with a rule set made for carrying risk between sessions. In exchange, Legacy asks for a longer minimum (5 trading days) and a stricter Best Day Rule (30%) than our day-trading program. If you trade purely intraday and want the fastest route to funded, look at Thunderbolt Classic instead.

Legacy has two stages: the evaluation (a one-step challenge) and the funded account you unlock after you pass. Some rules change between the two stages.

To pass, you need to grow the account by 6% while never breaking the trailing drawdown or the daily drawdown, and while trading on at least 5 separate days.

Profit target: 6% of your starting balance. On a $50K account that is $3,000 of profit. On a $100K account it is $6,000.

Minimum trading days: 5. A trading day counts when you place at least one trade on that day. The 5 days do not need to be consecutive, but you cannot pass the evaluation in fewer than 5 days even if you hit the profit target on day one.

Loss boundaries: the boundaries you have to respect are the trailing drawdown, the 3% daily drawdown, and the single-trade cap, all explained below.

The trailing drawdown is our Dynamic Risk Shield™. On Legacy it is a real-time trailing drawdown: it follows your equity live during the session as you profit.

Here is how it works. The trailing level sits a fixed amount below your highest equity point and follows that peak in real time. The level only ever moves up as your equity makes new highs, never down. It trails your equity higher as you profit, then locks permanently at your initial balance once your account grows by 4%. After it locks it becomes static and no longer moves, so you can trade freely without the drawdown chasing your profits. This is the same lock model as the Dynamic Risk Shield™ on our CFD product.

Worked example on a $50K evaluation (4% trailing): the trailing amount is 4%, which is $2,000, so the floor starts $2,000 below your balance.

On the funded account the same mechanism and the same 4% trailing amount apply, including the lock at your initial balance once the account grows by 4%. On a $50K funded account that is a $2,000 real-time trailing drawdown.

On top of the trailing drawdown, no single trade may lose more than 2% of your account size. This is a hard rule. Exceeding it triggers an automatic breach and terminates the account, even if the account is profitable overall. It is checked on every individual position. (Note that Legacy's single-trade cap is 2%, wider than the 1.5% used on Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard, in keeping with its swing-trading style.)

On a $50K account that is a $1,000 maximum loss on any one trade. On a $100K account it is $2,000. Size your positions and stops so that a single trade cannot exceed this limit. It applies on both the evaluation and the funded account.

How positions are counted: if you split one position into several orders on the same instrument in the same direction, they are counted together as one trade for this limit. You cannot get around the 2% cap by breaking a single trade into pieces.

Thunderbolt Legacy carries a 3% daily drawdown on both stages. It resets at 5:00 PM ET each day. Your equity may not fall more than 3% below its starting point for the day. On a $50K account that is a $1,500 daily loss limit. Breaching it ends the account for that stage.

Legacy lets you hold positions overnight and over the weekend. You can carry a trade through the daily session break and across the weekend, which is what makes it a genuine swing program.

Note that the market itself still follows the CME Globex schedule, so instruments are not tradable during the daily and weekend exchange breaks. Holding over the weekend means keeping a position open across that break, not trading through it.

Legacy uses a 30% Best Day Rule. It is a payout eligibility gate, not an account failure. Breaking it does not kill your account. It only means you cannot request a payout yet.

The rule: at the time you request a payout, your single most profitable trading day must not account for more than 30% of your total profit.

Example: say your total profit is $3,000 when you go to request a payout. 30% of $3,000 is $900. If your best single day made $900 or less, you pass the Best Day Rule. If your best day made $1,500 (half your profit), you are over the limit. You are not in trouble, you simply keep trading to build up profit on other days until your best day falls back below 30% of the total, then you can request the payout.

The point of the rule is to reward steady, repeatable trading over a single lucky session.

Funded Legacy traders keep a 99% profit split. Your first payout unlocks after a minimum of 5 trading days on the funded account. After that there is no fixed payout schedule: you can request a payout at any time once every condition below is met.

To request a payout you need all of the following:

Payout processing fees. A processing fee applies to each payout. For bank transfers the fee is $19.90 plus 2.49% of the payout amount. For crypto the fee is $19.90 plus 30% of the payout amount. Choose your payout method with these fees in mind.

15% challenge profit share bonus. Because Legacy is a challenge program, you can also earn a one-time bonus of 15% of your challenge-phase profit. If you grow your funded account enough and keep a clean payout record, this bonus is added on top of your regular payouts.

Thunderbolt Legacy trades the full Upcomers futures lineup on DXtrade: around 50 liquid CME Group futures across equity indices, metals, energy, FX, interest rates, grains, livestock, and crypto. That includes the standard-size contracts (such as ES, NQ, RTY, YM, GC, CL, NG) and 13 smaller micro contracts (such as MES, MNQ, MGC, MCL, M6E). All instruments are USD-denominated CME Group products (CME, CBOT, COMEX, NYMEX).

Margin requirements vary by instrument. The margin required per contract is shown on the platform in DXtrade for each instrument. For the exact tick sizes and tick values, see the tick size article and the mini vs micro article in this help center.

Keep your account active. An account left with no trading for 14 calendar days is closed automatically. The window starts at purchase (even before your first trade), and it resets every time you close a trade. You get a warning email before the account expires. Placing and closing at least one trade before the 14 days are up keeps the account open. A closed account cannot be reactivated: if your account closes for inactivity you would need to start a new one. The account fee is a one-time charge, there are no monthly or recurring platform or data fees.

Thunderbolt Legacy in one place:

Not sure Legacy is the right fit? Read the "How to choose your futures program" article, or start a chat with our team from the help center.