Trading conduct
Prohibited practices & automation policy
Bots are welcome. Exploiting the simulation is not. Every rule below is enforced automatically and reviewed by a human before anything is voided.
Explicitly allowed
- Expert advisors, algorithmic execution, and automated risk management
- Scalping, swing trading, and news-aware positioning outside the blackout
- Running identical strategies across multiple accounts you personally own
- Third-party trade copiers between your own accounts
How enforcement works
Every closed trade is checked against the rules on this page the moment it is recorded. A flagged trade keeps its loss but may lose its profit, and the case goes to a review queue. Accounts are only closed for prohibited practice after a human reviews the evidence, and the reason is written onto your account so you can see exactly what happened.
The rules
These limits are stamped onto your account at purchase and never change mid-evaluation.
Minimum hold time
Positions must be held for at least 60 seconds. A profitable trade closed faster than that has its profit removed from the evaluation. Losses always count in full.
Sustained tick scalping
If half or more of your last 20 trades close under the minimum hold time, the account is flagged for review as a feed-exploitation strategy, regardless of the profit on any single trade.
News blackout
No entries or exits within two minutes either side of a scheduled high-impact release. Profit taken inside the window is removed.
Copy trading & mirrored fills
You may run the same strategy across accounts you personally own. Near-identical fills placed within ten seconds across accounts belonging to different traders are treated as a copy-trade group and are a critical breach.
Group hedging
Taking opposing positions across accounts or traders to guarantee that one side passes is a critical breach and voids every account in the group.
Latency and pricing errors
Profit derived from a stale quote, a feed outage, or an execution error in the simulation is not market profit. It is removed and the account is reviewed.
Scheduled blackout windows
All times UTC, weekdays only. A two-minute buffer applies either side.
- 12:30 — US macro release block (12:30 UTC)
- 13:30 — US inflation / labour release block (13:30 UTC)
- 14:00 — US data release block (14:00 UTC)
- 18:00 — FOMC / central bank decision block (18:00 UTC)
- 09:30 — UK & EU release block (09:30 UTC)