The daily drawdown is a cap on how much your account can drop inside one trading day. On the funded futures accounts it is 2% of your account size on Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard, and 3% on Thunderbolt Legacy.

A note on the challenge phase. On Thunderbolt Classic the daily drawdown is 3% during the challenge phase and tightens to 2% once the account is funded. Thunderbolt Legacy is 3% in both phases. Vanguard is instant funding, so its 2% applies from the start.

It sits alongside the trailing drawdown (the Dynamic Risk Shield™), which is the account-wide floor that follows your equity higher as you profit. The two are separate limits. You have to stay inside both:

The Dynamic Risk Shield™ trails your equity higher in real time as you profit, then locks permanently at your initial balance once your account grows by the trailing percentage (4% on Thunderbolt Classic and Legacy, 3% on Vanguard). After it locks it becomes static and no longer moves, the same lock model as the CFD Dynamic Risk Shield™.

The limit is set from a snapshot taken at the 5:00 PM ET reset. The snapshot is the higher of your equity or your balance at that moment, and your loss limit sits your daily drawdown percentage below it.

Daily loss limit = higher of (equity or balance) at reset x (1 minus your daily drawdown %). That percentage is 2% on Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard, 3% on Thunderbolt Legacy. If your equity falls below the limit at any point before the next 5:00 PM ET, the daily drawdown is breached and all open positions close at market automatically.

Breaching the daily drawdown is a hard breach. It ends the account, unlike the soft Best Day Rule that only delays a payout. This is why the daily limit is measured on your live equity, so open positions count against it in real time, not just closed trades.

Futures do not run on a calendar day. CME defines its trading day as 6:00 PM ET to 5:00 PM ET the next day. The market opens Sunday at 6:00 PM ET, trades roughly 23 hours a day, and pauses for a one-hour maintenance break from 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM ET, Monday through Thursday. During that hour CME rolls the trading day over and runs its end-of-day clearing. (The official daily settlement prices themselves are struck earlier, at each product's day-session close, not at 5:00 PM ET.)

The 5:00 PM ET instant is that trading-day boundary. It is the futures-industry standard "new day" marker, so Upcomers anchors the daily drawdown reset to it. When the CME trading day flips at 5:00 PM ET, your daily loss budget resets to a fresh full 2% (3% on Legacy) for the new trading day.

Note on daylight saving: the reset tracks US Eastern clock time, so it moves with US daylight saving. It is always 5:00 PM in New York, which is 4:00 PM Central.

Daily drawdown is 2% of account size on Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard (3% on Legacy). The example below uses the 2% figure:

On a $50K account. At the 5:00 PM ET reset your account value is $50,000. Your daily loss limit for the new trading day is $1,000 (2%). That means your account cannot fall below $49,000 at any point before the next 5:00 PM ET. If you are down $900 you still have $100 of daily room left. If your account touches $49,000, the daily drawdown is breached, even if the trailing drawdown floor is still further below.

On a $100K account. Same math, scaled up. A $50,000 reset value gives a $1,000 limit; a $100,000 reset value gives a $2,000 limit, so the account cannot drop more than $2,000 within the trading day.

The reset gives you a clean slate. Say you lose $800 on a $50K account before 4:55 PM ET. At 5:00 PM ET the day rolls over and your daily allowance goes back to the full $1,000 for the new trading day. Yesterday's loss no longer counts against today's daily limit. (It still counts against your trailing drawdown and your overall balance, which do not reset.)

A position you hold across 5:00 PM ET is not closed. Only the day-counter resets. The loss up to 5:00 PM ET counts toward the old day, and any move after the 6:00 PM ET reopen counts toward the new day.

Be careful with the 5:00 to 6:00 PM ET maintenance break. Liquidity is thin to zero and the market can reopen at 6:00 PM ET at a very different price. A position that looked fine at 4:55 PM ET can gap against you at the reopen, and that move lands in the new trading day's daily drawdown.

Thunderbolt Legacy also has a daily drawdown, and on Legacy it is 3% of account size (wider than the 2% on Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard). It resets at the same 5:00 PM ET boundary. Legacy is the swing product built for overnight and weekend holds, so the wider 3% daily band gives positions carried across sessions a bit more room.

Legacy's trailing drawdown is real-time equity trailing (the Dynamic Risk Shield™), the same mechanism as Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard. That is your account-wide floor, and it is tracked on your live equity, not once a day. So on Legacy both limits, the 3% daily drawdown and the 4% trailing drawdown, apply at the same time.

If you traded Upcomers equity or MetaTrader products before, the reset time is different. Do not carry the old habit over.

On futures the "new day" for drawdown purposes starts in the late afternoon US time, not at UTC midnight. Plan your daily risk around the 5:00 PM ET rollover, not the calendar date.

Daily drawdown: 2% of account size on Thunderbolt Classic and Vanguard, 3% on Thunderbolt Legacy.

Reset: 5:00 PM ET every trading day, the CME session boundary.

Legacy: 3% daily drawdown, and real-time trailing drawdown like the other products.

Also live: the trailing drawdown, which never resets and must be respected at the same time.

Still unsure how a specific day would be calculated? Start a chat from the help center and we will walk through your account.