Prop firm simulation

A prop firm simulation replays the trade list of a backtest, or of a journal, against the written rules of a proprietary trading account: profit target, maximum drawdown, daily loss limit, consistency rule and payout conditions. It answers whether that sequence of trades would have kept the account alive, which is a different question from whether the strategy was profitable.

Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026

Why an equity curve is not enough

A strategy's equity curve never resets. A prop firm account does: when it breaches a drawdown or a daily loss limit, it is closed, and the next attempt starts from a fresh initial balance under the same rules. A recovery that only brings the curve back to break-even is a full gain for the new account, and a losing streak that the curve absorbs may be fatal for the account that lived through it.

This is why a simulation needs the individual trades, in order, with their dates. Whether an account passes depends on which day each loss landed, how the drawdown limit trails open profit, and whether a single day exceeded the consistency threshold. Summary statistics such as profit factor or expectancy cannot reconstruct any of that.

Rules that are usually simulated

  • Profit target: the cash profit that closes the evaluation phase.
  • Maximum drawdown: static, end-of-day trailing, or trailing on open profit, sometimes locked once a stated profit is reached.
  • Daily loss limit: a per-session cap that can end the account regardless of the overall balance.
  • Consistency rule: no single day or week above a percentage of total profit, or above a fixed amount.
  • Maximum contracts and maximum trading days.
  • Payout terms: minimum profit to withdraw and the trader's share of the profit.

In Senzoukria

The desktop application has a Results workspace on the Replay screen with a tab named Prop firm simulation. It reads the trades of a completed backtest and applies a rule set entered in the Prop firm rules form: firm, profit target, maximum drawdown and how it moves, daily loss limit, consistency rule, maximum contracts and payout terms. The form states that you should enter the rules of your own account as they appear on your firm's dashboard; the application does not guess them.

Only the last runs keep their trades, and reloading the application clears them, so the simulation asks you to run the backtest again when its trades are gone. When the trades carry no excursion data (MAE/MFE), the engine refuses to settle a drawdown rule that follows open profit rather than assume a price path it did not see. No commission is deducted by the simulated account, and the panel says so.

Common mistakes

  • Copying the evaluation rules to the funded phase: at many firms the funded phase has a different drawdown and a consistency rule that did not exist during the evaluation.
  • Reading a pass on one sample as a pass rate. The simulation reports what happened to that trade list; it does not estimate a probability for future accounts.
  • Treating a simulation as permission. Whether automated trading is allowed on the account is a contractual question with the firm, not a software feature.

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Frequently asked questions

Can a prop firm simulation run from a journal instead of a backtest?
It needs the same inputs either way: each trade with its entry time, exit time and result, in chronological order. A journal filled from real fills carries those fields, so the same rules can be applied to it. What the journal cannot provide, unless it was recorded, is the price path inside each trade, which some drawdown rules require.
Why does the simulation refuse to conclude on some rule sets?
A drawdown that trails open profit depends on the worst point reached during each trade, not only on the closed result. If the trade list carries no excursion figures, that worst point is unknown. Reporting a pass or a fail in that situation would rely on an assumption, so the engine reports that it cannot settle the rule instead.
Does passing the simulation mean the account will pass?
No. The simulation shows how one recorded sequence of trades behaves under a set of rules as you entered them. Future trades, slippage, fees the simulated account does not apply, and rules the firm interprets differently from the form can all change the outcome.

Keep reading

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