Guides · Rules that end accounts
When a trailing floor stops rising
A lock is a second rule hiding inside the trail. ‘It trails’ does not say where it stops.
An unqualified trailing drawdown follows your peak forever. A locking trail follows it until a stated point, then becomes static. The point might be the starting balance, the starting balance plus a buffer, or the profit-target balance. Each one changes whether a later give-back can kill a green account.
The Topstep lock, as printed
The maximum-loss article says the limit rises with the end-of-day balance, never moves down, and locks permanently once it reaches the starting balance. On a 50k with a 2,000 dollar limit, the floor starts at 48,000. After an end-of-day balance of 50,000 or more, the floor is described as locked at the start. A later loss that would have been survivable at the beginning is still inside the original 2,000 dollars of room, not inside a new hole under 48,000.
That is not the same as an intraday trail that never locks, and it is not the same as FTMO’s 2-Step static 10%, which never rose in the first place. Ask ‘does it lock, and at which number’ before you compare two products that both say trailing.