Tradeify Trading Journal: Growth, Select, Lightning and the Trailing Floor

Lightning (1-step EOD trailing)

Tradeify's entry-level eval. Single-step evaluation with profit target, EOD trailing drawdown, and daily loss limit. Mechanically similar to MFFU Rapid or Apex EOD — pass the profit target without busting the trailing floor or daily loss budget. Lightning is the right pick for traders comfortable with trailing drawdown rules.

Growth and Select

The two evaluation routes. Growth is the cheapest entry and carries a daily loss limit alongside a 35% consistency rule. Select costs a little more, drops the daily loss limit during evaluation and applies 40% consistency instead — the better fit if your losing days are occasionally large. Both use the same end-of-day trailing drawdown as Lightning.

The decision depends mostly on your trading style and tolerance for trailing-drawdown risk:

Because the drawdown engine is identical across all three, this is a cost-and-rules decision rather than a risk-structure one. The genuine differences are the daily loss limit and the consistency requirement, and those are worth matching to how your losing days actually look.

Lightning (EOD trailing)

EOD trailing drawdown — the floor recalculates only at session close based on the highest end-of-day balance. Mechanically identical to Apex EOD, MFFU Rapid, and TopStep. Daily loss limit applies in addition.

Growth and Select

Also EOD trailing. Your headroom is (current balance − current floor), and the floor is not a constant: it is derived from your highest end-of-day balance so far. Any calculation that treats it as fixed at (account size − max DD) will overstate your remaining room, and the overstatement grows the further into profit you go.

Daily loss limit

Growth and Lightning enforce a per-session daily loss limit; Select does not during evaluation. Hitting the limit closes the account for the session but doesn't bust permanently. Hitting the trailing drawdown floor permanently busts the account.

Tradeify accounts trade through Tradovate. The setup is the standard Tradovate workflow plus the Tradeify prop firm template:

1. Create a TradersForge account (free tier works for testing; Pro from $10/mo unlocks live drawdown tracking).
2. In Import & Connect, choose Connect Tradovate and authorize. Read-only — no order placement, no withdrawals.
3. Navigate to Prop Firms → Add Account. Select "Tradeify" → choose your plan → choose your account size.
4. Link the Tradovate account to the Tradeify prop firm account. Trades route automatically.
5. For backfill: Tradovate Performance.csv covers trades; Cash History.csv covers exact fees.
6. Optional: enable drawdown alerts. On any Tradeify plan the alert fires as headroom to the end-of-day trailing floor shrinks.

Because all three plans share the same drawdown engine, the review discipline is the same on every one of them — and it is not optional on any.

Track the gap, not the balance

Ask where the floor sits today versus yesterday. A green day lifts the floor, so some of what you just made is immediately spoken for. A red day does not lower it, so headroom shrinks. The gap between current balance and current floor is the number that decides whether the account survives, and it is not visible in your P&L.

The end-of-day close is the only reading that counts

This is the one genuine mercy in Tradeify's structure. A run-up you give back inside the session never touches the floor, because only the closing balance is recorded — unlike an intraday trail, where the peak itself moves the wall. So an ugly round trip within a day costs you nothing structurally. Finishing a day at a new high does.

Setup-level expectancy needs care on a trailing plan

A setup producing 5R wins followed by 1R losses looks profitable in raw expectancy but can still hurt you here, because the 5R win closes the day at a new high, lifts the floor, and the following 1R loss eats into freshly reduced headroom. Judge setups on raw R for strategy quality, then separately on what they do to your floor. Those are two different questions and a trailing plan makes them diverge.

Many traders run several Tradeify accounts at once. Since the plans share a drawdown engine, this diversifies cost and rule structure rather than risk mechanics — worth being clear-eyed about, because a mix of plans does not hedge you against a trailing floor:

1. Connect each Tradovate account separately to TradersForge.
2. Link each Tradovate account to its specific Tradeify template (Growth, Select or Lightning at the right size).
3. Use the multi-account dashboard to see every Tradeify account side by side, each with its own end-of-day trailing floor and remaining daily-loss budget.
4. Set drawdown alerts globally — get notified when any account approaches its floor.
5. Per-account analytics surface which plan and size actually suit your style, which is the useful comparison once drawdown mechanics are held constant.

Picking the right template

Plans differ on profit target, daily loss limit and consistency requirement, so the wrong template gives you wrong numbers even though the drawdown TYPE is the same across all of them. Check your Tradeify dashboard or purchase confirmation for the exact plan and size before configuring TradersForge — and if you hold a legacy Advanced account, say so, since it is no longer in the standard picker.

Two limits can end you, not one

On every Tradeify plan the daily loss limit sits on top of the trailing floor, and either can end your day or your account independently. Plenty of traders watch the drawdown carefully and get closed out by the session limit instead. Keep both numbers in front of you.

Tradovate fees on Tradeify accounts

Standard Tradovate-passed-through fees apply (~$1.12 round-trip per micro contract). Performance.csv shows gross P&L; Cash History.csv shows exact fees. Importing both gives precise net P&L tracking.

Plan switching

If you move between Tradeify plans, your TradersForge tracking needs the new plan template. Either edit the existing account's template or create a new account with the new plan and migrate trade history — the drawdown engine is the same, but targets, daily loss limits and consistency rules are not.