Profit Target
A profit target is a predetermined amount of profit that triggers an action once reached. It shows up in two distinct roles in prop trading. First, as an evaluation goal: the total profit you must accumulate to pass a firm's challenge and earn a funded account. Second, as a stop-when-green tool: a daily or weekly gain level that, once hit, tells you (or your platform) to stop trading and protect what you've made.
The two roles pull in opposite directions. An evaluation profit target is something you're trying to reach and exceed. A daily or weekly profit target is a ceiling you set on purpose — a discipline device that ends the session while you're ahead, before the urge to keep pressing gives the gains back.
Why it matters
The stop-when-green profit target fixes a specific failure mode: winning early, then overtrading a good day back to flat or red. Markets don't owe you a second great setup after the first, and the hours spent chasing one are when a green day most often turns. A hard profit target closes the account for the session at a number you chose while calm, not one you rationalize while hot.
For prop traders it also pairs naturally with the loss limit to define a session's whole envelope: stop here if you're down this much, stop here if you're up this much. And under some firms' consistency rules, banking a controlled amount across several days beats one outsized day, so a daily profit ceiling isn't just discipline — it can be what keeps your profit distribution inside the rules.
In MimikTrader
MimikTrader enforces daily and weekly profit targets as live rules (verified live). When an account reaches its configured daily or weekly profit target, the risk engine treats it as a stop-for-the-period event: the account flattens open positions and locks against new opening trades, banking the gain instead of leaving it exposed. Closing and reducing are never blocked. Like the loss limits, a daily profit-target lock self-clears at the 5:00 PM CT daily reset and a weekly one at the Sunday reset. Profit targets are part of the Pro plan's risk suite.
Example
Hypothetical: a trader sets a $750 daily profit target. By late morning the account is up $780 on the day. The engine flattens the open position and locks the account against new entries, so the afternoon's temptation to keep trading can't erode the win. At the 5:00 PM CT reset the lock clears and the next session starts fresh.