A prop firm pays real money out of real profits for one thing: repeatable skill. The problem is that over a short window, luck and skill produce identical account balances. A trader who grinds +$4,000 across forty trades and a trader who hit one 10× lottery candle both show +$4,000 — but only one of them is worth funding. Consistency rules exist to tell them apart.

How the industry does it (badly)

Most firms bury vague language — "trading must demonstrate consistency" — and interpret it after you've won, at payout review, in their favor. That's the version traders rightly hate: a rule you can't compute yourself is not a rule, it's a discretion.

Our version: one number, computable by you

At payout request, your single largest winning trade may not exceed 40% of your total winning PnL since funding. That's the whole rule.

Example: since funding you've booked winners of $1,800, $1,200, $900, and $600 — total winning PnL $4,500, largest winner $1,800, ratio exactly 40%. You pass. If instead one $3,000 winner sits atop $1,500 of other wins, the ratio is 67% and the payout is deferred — deferred, not confiscated. Nothing is taken from your balance; keep trading normally and the denominator grows until the ratio clears.

Why 40%, and why only at payout?

The threshold is deliberately generous: normal trading — including letting a great trade run — clears it without thinking about it. It only trips when a single outcome dominates everything else you've done, which is precisely the lottery-candle profile. And it applies at payout time only: it never breaches your account, never closes positions, never affects the evaluation itself. It's the answer to one question — "is this withdrawal backed by a track record?"

What it means for your trading

  • Trade normally. If your strategy produces many similar-sized winners, you will never notice this rule exists.
  • If one monster trade dominates your PnL, congratulations — now demonstrate the rest of your edge. A few more routine winners dilute the ratio quickly.
  • Don't game it by splitting one position into fragments closed a second apart — the review looks at economic substance, and gaming a transparency rule is the one way to turn a deferral into a problem.

The consistency rule is published in full in our Restricted Trading Practices, next to the short list of things that actually get accounts closed. Everything else — news, weekends, bots you built, letting winners run — is just trading.