In an FTMO Challenge 2-Step you need 10% profit in phase 1 and 5% in phase 2. You may lose 5% in one day and 10% overall. The target is large and the limits are close. Traders who pass usually don't have a genius strategy – they have a risk plan that keeps the limits out of reach in the first place.
Why accounts fail at the limits, not the target
There is no time limit for the profit target, but there is no second chance on the loss limits. A single bad day ends the challenge, no matter how good the week before was. So it pays to plan backwards: first decide what must never happen, then see how fast the target is realistically reachable.
Losing streaks are normal – plan for them
Even a good strategy loses several times in a row. A worked example: if a strategy wins 45% of its trades, then over 100 trades there is about a 92% chance of at least one streak of 5 losses, and still about a 30% chance of a streak of 8. (Our own simulation, assuming independent trades.)
What that means for risk per trade:
| Risk per trade | Losses to −5% (daily limit) | Losses to −10% (overall limit) |
|---|---|---|
| 2% | 2–3 | 5 |
| 1% | 5 | 10 |
| 0.5% | 10 | 20 |
At 2% per trade, one normal bad day is enough. At 0.5% you need an exceptional streak. On top of that, slippage and spreads often make a loss slightly larger than planned.
The price of safety: time
Less risk means a slower path to the target. An example with a 45% win rate and an average win of 1.5 times the risk: each trade leaves about 0.125 risk units on average.
- At 1% risk per trade, that is roughly 80 trades to +10%.
- At 0.5% risk per trade, roughly 160 trades.
That is the real decision: faster with a higher chance of losing the challenge in a single day – or slower and more robust. FTMO requires at least 4 trading days and sets no maximum time limit. There is no reason to force the target.
Five rules for your risk plan
- Your own daily brake below FTMO's limit. For example, stop for the day at −2 to −3.5%. That leaves room for slippage and open positions.
- Your own overall brake below 10%. Stopping at −8 or −9% and re-planning beats losing the whole account in a last desperate phase.
- Open risk counts. FTMO measures equity. Add up the risk of all open positions down to their stops before opening a new one.
- No doubling down after losses. Bigger positions to win back a loss are the fastest way to the daily limit – and FTMO treats position sizes far outside your pattern as forbidden risk behaviour.
- Steady rather than one big day. In the 1-Step Challenge, the best day may account for at most 50% of the profit (for newer orders measured against total profit). A calm, consistent curve usually meets this naturally.
Check your room every morning
Before you trade: balance at 00:00, current equity and distance to both limits. Our FTMO calculator shows this in seconds. How the daily limit is calculated exactly is explained in FTMO daily loss calculation.
How the Constans Engine handles it
The Constans Engine applies these rules as fixed settings: it pauses at −3.5% per day and stops at −9% overall, each before FTMO's limits. You can see how that plays out in real trading in our public track record, with every trade and every drawdown. There is no guarantee of passing a challenge, with or without an engine.