The rules they do not put on the pricing page
48 terms across 15 firms that can cost you an account or a payout after you have paid — 28 of them close the account outright. Every one is quoted from the firm’s own pages, with a link to where we read it.
News
What you may do around a high-impact release.
- Funding TradersCloses the account
News trading banned on Instant accounts only
On Instant Funded accounts, opening, closing or holding a position inside the restricted window around high-impact news is not allowed. Evaluation accounts are treated differently, so the rule you read may not be the rule on your plan.
News trading banned on the larger CFD accounts
News trading is not permitted on $100,000 and $200,000 CFD accounts during either the challenge or the earning phase. The smaller accounts are not covered by the same restriction, so the rule depends on the size you bought.
- ThinkCapitalCloses the account
News trading is banned unless you bought the add-on
Trading is prohibited from two minutes before to two minutes after a scheduled news release unless you purchased the News Trading add-on, or your challenge permits news trading by default. The restriction applies to the funded phase as well as the evaluation — this is not a challenge-only rule — and their own help pages describe accounts being terminated for breaking it.
Five of the six routes ban news trading outright
One-Step, Two-Step, Instant Funding, Phoenix and Sprint all bar trading the news. Only Instant Pro permits it. Sprint goes further and bars trading around the market open and close as well. Which route you bought decides whether an ordinary news trade is a breach.
News profits are deducted rather than simply disallowed
Once funded, positions may not be opened or closed within 5 minutes either side of a high-impact red-folder event on the affected currency, and profits made from news are deducted. Trades opened more than 5 hours before the event are excluded from the restriction.
Hedging around red news is banned for 15 minutes either side
Straddled, offsetting or equivalent hedged exposure on the same or correlated instruments is prohibited within fifteen minutes before or after Red or Amber events on the Forex Factory calendar, earnings and geopolitical events, where the purpose is to capture the volatility. Note the window is measured both ways: a hedge placed a quarter of an hour before the release is inside it.
Betting the account on a news event is named as abuse
Their terms describe a prohibited "Boom or Bust" approach — where the success or failure of the account rests on one trade, or a series of trades connected to a major news event — and separately name excessive risk taking exacerbated by news events. Both are assessed after the fact, on the shape of your trading rather than on a number you can watch.
This list is only as complete as our reading. 15 of the firms we track have been through a rulebook pass; the rest are still to do, and a firm missing from here has not been cleared — it has not been checked. See every firm we track.