Drawdown Alerts: What 80% and 90% Mean

A drawdown limit you only find out about once you've hit it is a limit you've already breached. By then the damage is done — a failed prop-firm challenge, a blown account, a client's money past the line you promised to hold. Drawdown alerts exist to reach you before that point, while there's still a decision left to make.

Setting your limit

You set one figure per account: the drawdown you never want to cross. Enter it in pounds or as a percentage — say £2,000 on a £25,000 account, or 8%. That's your line. Karnek then measures the account's live drawdown against it, continuously, and counts how close you are as a share of that limit rather than as a raw number you'd have to do sums on.

What 80% and 90% mean

The alerts fire at two points on the way to your limit, not at the limit itself:

80% — the first warning. On a £2,000 limit, that's £1,600 down. The account is well into the range you set aside, and it's time to pay attention: ease off, reduce size, or look at what's driving the loss.
90% — the closer, more urgent one. That's £1,800 down on the same limit. You've £200 of room left. This is the one that says decide now.

Two stages, because a single alert is always wrong in one direction. Fire it early and it's noise you learn to ignore; fire it late and it arrives after the choice is gone. Warnings at 80% and 90% bracket the moment that matters.

Why the early warning matters

For anyone on a funded challenge, this is the whole game.

On a prop-firm challenge the drawdown line isn't a guideline, it's a hard floor — cross it and the account is gone, fee and all, whatever the balance was doing that morning. The gap between 90% of your limit and 100% of it is the only room you get to react in. An alert at £1,800 of a £2,000 limit is the difference between closing a couple of positions and paying to start the whole challenge again.

It matters off the challenge too. On live client money the limit is a promise, and being warned before you break it is the difference between a phone call you make and one you have to take. On your own account, it's simply the margin between a bad week and a bad year.

It reads live from the terminal

A Karnek drawdown alert warning at 80% and 90% of a set limit, delivered by email or Telegram. — Two drawdown alerts on the phone — one at 80% of the limit, one at 90% — each naming the account and how far it's down.

The alert is only as good as the number behind it. Karnek reads live equity straight from the terminal through its heartbeat — not an end-of-day figure, not a delayed feed. That means it counts the floating loss on positions that are still open: the drawdown that hasn't closed yet but is every bit as real. When you cross 80%, the message reaches you by email or Telegram within moments, on whichever you've set up.

The Karnek note

Karnek can warn you that you're close to your limit — it can't stop the trade that takes you over it. It reads live equity read-only and sends the alert; closing positions or cutting size stays with you, or your EA. Think of it as a smoke alarm, not a sprinkler.

See it in Karnek: explore Karnek's features and put this into practice.