# Why was my account breached in profit? > An evaluation can end on a day that closed above its limit. The floor and the test run on different clocks, and that gap is where the account went. - Canonical: https://hadalinstruments.com/research/why-was-my-account-breached-in-profit/ - Published: 2026-08-05 - Author: Hadal Research - Answers the question: "why was my account breached while in profit" - Coins the term: **The Asymmetric Clock** — A limit whose anchor advances on one schedule while the breach test runs on another — the floor sampled daily, the account compared to it continuously — so a day can close above the limit and still have ended. --- You closed the day up. The dashboard says the account is gone. Nothing in the two facts contradicts the other, and the reason is a detail almost no rule summary states plainly: **the floor and the test do not run on the same clock.** > **WHAT THIS IS — AND WHAT IS NOT PUBLISHED.** This article is method. I have measured and published nothing about prop-firm outcomes — no pass rates, no breach frequencies, no firm-by-firm comparison — and no such figure appears on this page. This page names no firm and describes no firm's terms. Rules differ between firms and between programmes at the same firm; where this page and your rule document disagree, your rule document is the fact. Status of my own measurements: **NOT YET COMPUTED**. Hadal carries no affiliate links and takes no commission from any firm. ## A limit has three parts, and only one of them gets advertised Any loss limit of this shape is built from three separate decisions, and rule summaries usually describe the first while leaving the other two implicit. - **The anchor.** What the floor is measured *from* — a starting balance, a high-water mark, yesterday's close. - **The update schedule.** *When* the anchor is allowed to move. Continuously as equity makes new highs, or once a day at a stated clock time, or never. - **The test frequency.** *How often* your account is compared against the floor. Continuously through the session, or once at the close. The advertised number — the allowance — tells you the distance between the anchor and the floor. It tells you nothing about the other two, and the other two are where surprising breaches live. ## The asymmetric clock Here is the combination that produces the outcome you are looking at. **The anchor updates on a coarse schedule and the test runs on a fine one.** Your floor is set from a daily sample — yesterday's closing balance, say. It does not move during the session no matter how well the day goes. But the comparison between your account and that floor is running continuously, and in many rule sets it is run against your *equity*, which includes open positions, rather than against your closed balance. So an unrealised excursion during the session can put your equity below a floor that your closing balance ends the day comfortably above. The test fires at the moment it happens. The close comes later and changes nothing, because the breach has already been recorded. That is the asymmetric clock: **the floor is sampled slowly, the account is judged quickly, and the gap between the two sampling rates is the exposure nobody quotes.** ## The worked case The following numbers are **hypothetical** and are here to show the arithmetic, not to describe any product. Take an account with a floor of 49,500 — set from a previous daily close, and fixed for today. Through the session an open position drifts against you and equity touches 49,300 before recovering. You close the position in profit and the day ends at 50,400. Two facts, both true: - **At the close you were 900 above the floor.** - **Intraday you were 200 below it**, and that is the number the test saw. The account ended at the moment equity touched 49,300. Everything after that is a record of an account that had already stopped. ## Why the forced exit can make the final number look even better There is a second-order effect worth knowing, because it makes the outcome look more absurd than it is. Where a breach triggers an automatic liquidation, the fill you get is the fill the market offers at that moment — and [slippage](/glossary/slippage/) can be favourable as easily as adverse. A forced exit that fills better than the trigger price can leave your final realised balance *above* the limit. The breach still stands. It was recorded when the test fired, on the equity that existed then, and a subsequent good fill does not reach back and unrecord it. ## What to check in your own document, in this order 1. **Is the test run on balance or on equity?** If it reads equity, unrealised movement can breach you. This single word is the difference between the outcome above and no outcome at all. 2. **When does the anchor move?** Continuously with new highs, once a day at a stated time, or never. A stated time is a timezone question as much as a clock question. 3. **How often is the test run?** Continuously, or once at the close. Coarse anchor plus fine test is the combination on this page. 4. **Does the floor ever stop rising?** Some rules stop the ratchet once the floor reaches the starting balance. Others state no ceiling. Where your document does not answer one of these, that silence is itself a finding, and it is worth putting to the firm in writing before you rely on either reading. ## What This Does Not Establish (The Limits) The article does not tell you whether the breach was correctly applied to your account. That is a question about your record and your rule text together, and it is answerable — the arithmetic on a closed-trade ledger is exact, and where the anchor advances on a daily balance the whole anchor path can be reconstructed from the ledger alone. But it is not answerable from a general description of a mechanism, and this page is a general description of a mechanism. Answering it for one specific account means reconstructing that account's anchor path against that firm's rule text, which is what the [prop-breach forensics assay](/assays/#prop-breach-forensics) is for. It also takes no view on whether any rule is fair. A rule of this shape is a term of an agreement someone signed, and the question of whether the arithmetic was applied correctly is entirely separate from the question of whether the arithmetic is reasonable. I measure the first. Nobody should present the second as a measurement. The related arithmetic is on the [trailing drawdown calculator](/tools/trailing-drawdown-calculator/), and the term itself is defined at [trailing drawdown](/glossary/trailing-drawdown/). --- ## Claims examined ### Claim 01 — canonical: https://hadalinstruments.com/refutations/#claim-8edcb001 > "My account closed above the limit, so the breach must be a platform error." — our reading: False The two facts are compatible. A limit has an anchor, an update schedule and a test frequency; where the anchor is sampled once a day and the test runs continuously against equity, an unrealised excursion can put the account below a floor that the closing balance ends above. The breach is recorded at the moment the test fires, and a later good close does not unrecord it. Where a forced liquidation fills favourably the final realised balance can end higher still, which makes the outcome look like an error and is the same mechanism. **What is true:** A limit has an anchor, an update schedule and a test frequency, and where the schedule is coarse and the test is fine an account can be below the floor intraday and above it at the close — the breach is recorded at the moment of the test, not at the end of the day. Evidence: https://hadalinstruments.com/research/why-was-my-account-breached-in-profit/#claim-8edcb001 ## Cite This Article APA BibTeX HTML Hadal Research. (2026). Why was my account breached in profit?. Hadal Research. https://hadalinstruments.com/research/why-was-my-account-breached-in-profit/ Version 5762f56, 2026-08-29. @misc{hadal_2026_why-was-my-account-breached-in-profit, author = {Hadal Research}, title = {Why was my account breached in profit?}, year = {2026}, url = {https://hadalinstruments.com/research/why-was-my-account-breached-in-profit/}, howpublished = {Hadal Research}, version = {5762f56}, note = {Published: 2026-08-05; version dated 2026-08-29} } Source: Hadal Research, Why was my account breached in profit?. Original Research Copy Citation **Version 5762f56** identifies the commit that last changed this page in Hadal's content repository. That repository is not public, so the identifier does not resolve externally — it is published so a citation pins one specific state rather than a moving page. To obtain the exact version cited, use the [press and research route](https://hadalinstruments.com/press/). ## Explore further ### Instruments - [Prop-Evaluee Risk Guardian](https://hadalinstruments.com/instruments/prop-evaluee-risk-guardian/) - [Stress Harness](https://hadalinstruments.com/instruments/stress-harness/) ### Concepts - [Drawdown](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/drawdown/) - [Risk of Ruin](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/risk-of-ruin/) - [Slippage](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/slippage/) - [Trailing Drawdown](https://hadalinstruments.com/glossary/trailing-drawdown/) ### Research - [Where a funded-account breach dispute can go](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/where-does-a-breach-dispute-go/) Asked as: where does a prop firm breach dispute go - [Is a drawdown limit on balance or equity?](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/is-my-drawdown-on-balance-or-equity/) Asked as: is my drawdown limit calculated on balance or equity - [What causes a prop firm drawdown breach?](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/what-causes-a-prop-firm-drawdown-breach/) Asked as: what causes a prop firm drawdown breach [All Hadal research](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/)[This article as plain markdown](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/why-was-my-account-breached-in-profit.md) --- ## Raw artifact — NOT PUBLISHED FOR THIS PAGE No downloadable artifact ships with this page. Eight published measurements do, each content-hashed so a reader can verify the figures independently. Where a measurement is published here without one, that is a gap rather than a policy, and it is stated rather than left to be noticed. [Measurements that ship their data](https://hadalinstruments.com/research/)