Your daily loss limit: 5% of what?
Prop-firm traders and anyone with a daily limit: the number your limit is counted from decides how much you can really lose in a day.
The short answer
A 5% daily loss limit sounds simple. The question nobody asks is: 5% of what? Count it from the wrong number and you can give back far more than 5% of what you actually had, without the limit ever stepping in.
One trading day, two limits
An example day on a 10,000 account. The same 5% limit, counted from the morning balance or from the day's best equity.
What the example shows
You start the day at 10,000. By lunch an open gold trade is up 300, so your equity is 10,300. Then it turns, and you close the day at 9,550.
- Counted from the morning balance you lost 4.5%: inside the limit, nothing happens.
- Counted from your best moment you gave back 750, more than 7%. A limit counted from the day's best (10,300 × 95% = 9,785) would have closed everything at 15:00, around 9,760.
We tested it in MetaTrader 5
We ran a small daily loss lock in the MetaTrader 5 Strategy Tester (EURUSD and gold, January to April 2026, every tick). With the day counted from the balance at the daily reset, open profit was given back without the lock ever stepping in: on one gold run an account went from 12,100 to 9,050 that way. Counting the day from the higher of balance and equity at the reset closed that gap.
Prop firms differ
Some prop firms count the daily limit from the balance at midnight in their own time zone, some from the higher of balance and equity, and some trail the maximum loss from the highest balance. Read your firm's rule word for word, and set your tools to the same number and the same reset time.
What to do
- Know which number your limit is counted from, and when the day resets (server time, Central European time or New York time).
- Watch the room left before the limit, not only the loss so far.
- Size every trade so one stop loss uses only a small part of that room. The gold lot size calculator does the math for gold.
- Let something other than your nerves close the trades when the room is gone. That is what our Account Guard Pro does, with the rules of FTMO, FundedNext and The5ers built in.
Where Giza comes in
Giza Gold EA sizes every trade from a fixed % of the account, puts a stop loss on every trade, and has a maximum-loss safety net in every preset that closes everything and stops trading before the account falls too far.
Every trade, in public.
Watch Giza Gold EA trade gold and stock indices, losses included, updated every 5 minutes.