Unrealized (intraday) drawdown
Unrealized drawdown is a prop firm rule under which open positions count: the account's peak and its breach are measured on equity, including the floating profit or loss of trades still open, so the threshold can rise on a winner that is never closed and the account can fail on an adverse excursion that is never realised.
Senzoukria · Glossary · Updated September 2026
The question behind the term
Every drawdown rule has to say what it measures. Balance-based rules look only at closed trades: the peak is the highest closed balance and the breach is tested on closed balance. Equity-based rules look at the account marked to market: the peak includes the best open profit ever shown, and the breach is tested against the worst open loss. The second kind is what traders call unrealized or intraday drawdown, and it is the rule that catches people by surprise, because a trade that ends at break-even can still have moved the threshold or touched it on the way.
The two halves can be set independently. A firm may update the peak on equity but test the breach on balance, or the reverse. Both answers are needed to model an account.
Two effects of counting open positions
- On the peak: a position that shows a large open gain raises the reference; if it is closed lower, the threshold has risen by the gain given back. This is the effect of the question does your drawdown follow your open profit.
- On the breach: a position whose adverse excursion reaches the threshold fails the account even if it would later have recovered. Stops placed beyond the threshold are therefore meaningless under this rule.
- Both effects require knowing the price path inside each trade, that is the maximum favourable and adverse excursion, not only entry and exit.
In Senzoukria
The Maximum drawdown block of the Prop firm rules form asks directly: Does your drawdown follow your open profit? The help text gives the test case, going +800 on an open position and coming back to zero, and the answers are Yes, it counts even without closing, and No, only my closed trades. The update-schedule options separately include In real time, including open positions, and the Daily loss limit block asks whether that limit is Measured on my closed balance or my equity, open positions included. The Prop firm simulation uses each trade's recorded MAE and MFE to apply these rules; when a journal or a backtest carries no excursion data, the engine reports that the price path inside each trade is unknown, that a drawdown rule following open profit cannot be settled, and refuses to conclude rather than assume. The backtest report shows the recorded excursions in the charts Adverse excursion vs result and Favourable excursion vs result, and states No excursion measured on these trades when they are absent.
Practical consequences
- Scaling out of a winner protects part of the gain against the peak effect only if the firm updates the peak on closed balance.
- Wide stops that sit beyond the drawdown threshold provide no protection under an equity breach test.
- Holding through a scheduled release with an open position exposes the account to an excursion the closed record will never show.
- A journal without excursions cannot tell whether an account would have survived an equity-based rule. Excursion data has to be recorded at trade time.
Related
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Frequently asked questions
- My position went to +800 and I closed it flat. Did my cushion drop by 800?
- Under a rule that follows open profit, yes: the peak rose by 800 while the position was open, so the threshold rose by 800, and the closed balance did not. Under a balance-based rule, no: the peak only records closed balances, which did not change. This is exactly the question the Senzoukria rules form asks, and the answer must come from the firm's agreement.
- Why can a simulation refuse to evaluate an unrealized drawdown rule?
- Because it needs the price path inside each trade, at minimum the maximum favourable and adverse excursion, to know whether the threshold moved or was touched while the position was open. Trades imported from a statement of entries and exits carry no such path. A simulation that assumed the path would produce a pass rate that means nothing, so Senzoukria reports the missing data instead.
- Is the daily loss limit also measured on equity?
- At some firms yes and at others on closed balance; it is a separate setting from the maximum drawdown. An equity-based daily limit can be hit by an open loss that recovers before the close. The rules form records the basis for the daily limit independently of the basis for the maximum drawdown.