Most Popular Futures Prop Firms
In the prop trading industry, rules can vary significantly from one firm to another based on their risk management policies. This section provides key rules for each firm and highlights any significant rule changes along with the specific dates of those changes.
3.1
10
EOD (Standard & No Activation) - Trading Rules
Daily Loss Limit (DLL)
EOD Drawdown Enforcement
Intraday (Standard & No Activation) — Trading Rules
No Daily Loss Limit (DLL) in Evaluation
Intraday Trailing Drawdown Enforcement
When EOD & Intraday Drawdown Stops Trailing
Inactivity Rule
News Trading
Expert Advisors
Copy Trading
No Hedging
Contract Scaling Rules
Trading With Risk Management
Using the Trailing Threshold as a Stop Loss
Evaluation Period
Trading Hours Explained
Prohibited Activities
Consequences for Rule Violations
Apex Code of Conducts Explained
Price Limit Rule:
Dollar Cost Averaging:
Account Rolling:
Expert Advisors:
Copy Trading
Hedging or Reverse Trading
Order Fill Manipulation
News trading
Prohibited Activities
For Tier 1 news
For non-Tier 1 news
Inactivity Rule*
For Instant accounts purchased after November 23, 2025: Must place at least one trade every 7 days, or the account will be breached.
Accounts remain active with recurring monthly payments, even without trades, but regular activity is encouraged to avoid termination.
Terminated accounts can be recovered by settling all outstanding payments (requires prior contact for pauses due to special reasons)
Trading Hours
Weekend closure
Market closed from Friday 5:00 PM EST until Sunday 6:00 PM EST; holidays announced in advance.
No overnight positions: All trades must be closed by 4:59 PM EST daily; open positions are automatically liquidated by the system.
Scalping Rule
FuturesElite allows microscalping within certain limits:
Trades executed in less than 10 seconds (Min 11 seconds).
Trades equal to or less than 1 points on NQ (Nasdaq 100) futures or the equivalent on other instruments.
Evaluation
Sim Funded
Fair Play and Prohibited Trading Practices Explained https://faq.futureselite.com/en/articles/11949446-what-is-allowed-and-not-allowed-with-us-fair-play-and-prohibited-trading-practices
Giveaway accounts Rules
News Trading
Copy Trading Rule
Consistency Rule
Expert Advisors
Gap Trading
Hedging prohibited
VPN Usage
High Frequency Trading (HFT)
Using automated trading systems designed to scalp at an extremely high frequency is prohibited.
Strategies that produce more than 200 trades in a day is prohibited.
Not allowed to use any trading strategy intended to exploit or create errors in the services, such as errors in the display of prices or delays in their updates.
Trading an excessive or unrealistic number of contracts in the day is not allowed.
Inactivity rule
Circuit Breaker Rule
Drawdown Lock
Trading Hours Explained
Prohibited Trade Practices
Less than
10 reviews
Key Rules
All positions and working orders: Must be closed by 3:50pm CT until 5pm CT
Daily PnL limit: Over the course of the Evaluation (Challenge phase), no single trading day can exceed 30% or more of your total PnL
Copy Trading: Not allowed
EAs: Not allowed
News Trading: Allowed
Minimum trading days: None
Inactivity: 5 consecutive trading days (On funded accounts only)
Prohibited Trading Practices
Platform manipulation: Employing strategies designed to take advantage of or generate errors within the platform, such as price display errors or delays in price updates
Disruptive trading practices: Engaging in disruptive trading practices, including spoofing
Unrealistic contract volume: Executing an unrealistic number of contracts in a single day
Collaborative manipulation: Collaborating to manipulate or abuse the trading environment, which may include trading between connected accounts, multiple accounts across different parties, or executing trades that hedge or pool risks among unrelated accounts
Software and automation: Utilizing software, artificial intelligence, or ultra-fast data entry techniques that could potentially manipulate the trading environment or provide an unfair advantage
Non-market-aligned trading: Trading in a manner that does not align with actual market practices in the relevant futures markets or could potentially cause financial or other types of harm to Earn2Trade
Technical exploitation: Using tools or strategies that negatively impact the site's functionality or exploit any of its technical flaws
Bypassing restrictions: Bypassing geographical or other technical restrictions
Third-party trading: Trading on behalf of others or sharing incentives through any form of business arrangement
News Trading
During the Test phase:
On Pro and Pro+:
Prohibited News Events (All Products)
FOMC meeting minutes/announcements. These occur on Wednesdays at 2pm eastern time. (You are allowed to trade through FED speakers.)
NON-Farm payroll (NFP). (These events occur on Friday’s at 8:30am eastern, once per month.)
Consumer Price Index – CPI
In addition to these news events, the following news events are prohibited for specific instruments:
You can check all upcoming news events at forexfactory.com
Expert Advisor
Copy Trading
No Counter Positions
Inactivity Rule
Trading Hours
Trading window: 6 PM Eastern – 5 PM Eastern
All open positions are automatically closed at 4:55 PM EST — accounts are no longer failed for forgetting to close positions. This applies to all Tradovate accounts automatically, and for Rithmic, it applies to all new accounts created from 6 AM EST May 6 2026 onward.
If the market for a specific product closes before 5 PM Eastern and trader cannot exit before the deadline, the account will be liquidated.
Market hours can change due to holidays. It is the trader’s responsibility to monitor holiday schedules. Missing a holiday-adjusted close time will result in account liquidation.
CME Price Limit
Drawdown
Drawdown is the total amount you can lose on your account. The drawdown is End of Day on test accounts, meaning it updates at the end of the trading day (5PM EST).
On the PRO accounts, the drawdown is intraday, meaning it trails your unrealized profit in real time.
In PRO+, the drawdown is End of Day, the same as in the test. The drawdown across all three account types will STOP trailing once it has reached the initial account balance.
Once traders pass the Test, they have the option to reset the Pro account up to 3 times.
Max Loss Type
Test & Pro+ Stage: EOD Trailing
Pro Stage: Intraday Trailing
Pro Account Reset Option: Once traders pass the Test, they have the option to reset the Pro account up to 3 times.
Live accounts (PRO+ accounts) overview
Live accounts (PRO+ accounts) Explained:
News Trading
Expert Advisors
Copy Trading
Trading Hours
Inactivity Rule
Biggest Loss vs. Biggest Win (single trade)
2% Price Limit Rule
Drawdown Lock Rule
Prohibited Strategies
Trading Without Stops:
Automated Tools:
All-in Trading:
Price Limit Trading:
News Trading:
Inactivity Rule (Evaluation and Funded stage):
Risk to Reward Ratio's:
Order Placement:
Trading Hours:
Copy Trading:
What we allow:
Read more about the prohibited practices here: https://helpfutures.blueguardian.com/en/articles/14110289-prohibited-trading-strategies
Less than
10 reviews
Copy-Trading
Expert Advisor (EA)
News Trading
Prohibited Trading Strategies
Martingale or similar high-risk trading strategies are not allowed.
Grid trading is not allowed.
Gap trading is not allowed.
Overnight holding rule: It is not allowed to keep positions open overnight in Futures Prime accounts
High-Frequency Trading (HFT) is not permitted on any of our accounts.
Scalping
Inactivity
Gambling and Inconsistent Trading
News Trading
Expert Advisors
Copy Trading
Inactivity Rule
DCA - Dollar Cost Averaging (Stacking)
Micro Scalping
Hedging
One-Direction Rule
Bulk account exploitation:
High Frequency Trading:
Stop‑Loss policy:
VPN Usage:
More on Prohibited Strategies
Live Accounts Explained
Inactivity period
News Trading
Copy Trading
Expert Advisors
Risk Limits and Stop Loss Rules
Risk Per Trade Idea
Stop Loss Rule
Trading Hours Explained
Circuit Breaker Limits
Prohibited Strategies
Gambling / Speculative Trading, Hyperactivity / Excessive Trading, Account or Device Sharing, One-Sided Betting, Arbitrage / Tick Scalping / High-Frequency Trading (HFT), Copy Trading Across Different Users, Hedging between different accounts/ Reverse Trades, Gap Trading, Trading Without Technical or Fundamentals, Trading Behavior Inconsistency, Circuit Breaker Limit Violations, Non-Compliance with CME Group Rules.
See details: https://holaprime.com/futures/prohibited-trading-practices/
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