What is the Max Loss Limit?
The Max Loss Limit, often shortened to MLL, is a trailing drawdown. It is the lowest end-of-day balance your account may reach before it is failed. It follows your profit up, never down, and stops at your starting balance plus $100.
Every StarTrading account has one. Cycle, Clear and Stream share the same amount for a given size: the type changes what happens around it (daily limits, consistency, buffer), not the limit itself. Direct runs a wider limit on the 100K and 150K sizes, $3,500 and $5,000, because it is funded from the first trade.
| Account type | 25K | 50K | 100K | 150K |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cycle | −$1,000 | −$2,000 | −$3,000 | −$4,500 |
| Clear | −$1,000 | −$2,000 | −$3,000 | −$4,500 |
| Stream | −$1,000 | −$2,000 | −$3,000 | −$4,500 |
| Direct | −$1,000 | −$2,000 | −$3,500 | −$5,000 |
How does the Max Loss Limit trail?
At the end of each trading day we look at your closed balance. If it is a new high, the limit moves up by the same amount. If the day was a loss, the limit stays where it was. Open positions during the session do not move it on end-of-day accounts.
When does the Max Loss Limit lock?
When it reaches the starting balance plus $100. On a 100K account that is $100,100. After that point the limit is a fixed floor. You can be up $20,000 and give back $19,900 without failing; the account fails only if equity closes under $100,100.
This is why the first days matter most: the limit is closest to your balance before you have built a cushion.
Which accounts trail intraday?
Funded Stream accounts. Their limit follows your open equity in real time, including unrealised profit. A Stream evaluation bought with the intraday option also trails intraday; with the end-of-day option it trails like every other evaluation.
Intraday trailing means an open winner that reverses can move the limit against you within the session. Traders who scale out of winners or use fixed targets are less exposed to this than traders who let positions run.
What happens when the limit is hit?
The account is failed and closed. Open positions are flattened. You can buy a reset for the same account at the reset price, which restarts it at the starting balance with a fresh limit. On funded accounts, the trailing history restarts as well.
Common mistakes
- Reading the limit as intraday on an end-of-day account and cutting winners too early. Only the close counts.
- Forgetting that the limit follows closed profit, so a large win followed by a give-back the next day leaves less room than expected.
- On funded Stream accounts, holding a large open winner through a reversal: the intraday limit has already moved up.
- Confusing the Max Loss Limit with the Daily Loss Limit. Only the first fails the account; the second pauses it.
Simulated accounts until Live. Futures trading involves substantial risk of loss.