Prop Firm Rules: A Complete Guide for 2025

Key Trading Guidelines and Risk Parameters

To ensure a fair and stable trading environment, please adhere to the following operational rules. These guidelines are designed to promote consistent risk management and long-term success.

Account Activity and Management

• Inactivity Rule: All accounts will be automatically deactivated after a period of 30 consecutive days without any trading activity. To prevent deactivation, please ensure you log in and place a trade. Deactivated accounts cannot be recovered.
• Drawdown Reset on Alpha One Accounts: For Alpha One account holders, if you achieve a 6% profit, your trailing maximum drawdown will reset to your initial balance. It is crucial to maintain a profit buffer to continue trading. Withdrawing your entire profit buffer will lead to the closure of the account.
• Qualified Analyst Allocation: The maximum capital allocation for any single trading strategy on a Qualified Analyst Account is capped at $300,000. A "strategy" is defined by the specific assets being traded.

Prohibited Trading Practices

• All-or-Nothing Strategy: Engaging in "all-or-nothing" trading practices, where an account's entire margin is risked on a single outcome, is strictly prohibited.
• High-Frequency Order Spamming: Placing an excessive number of orders in a very short timeframe is not permitted.
• Risk Management Violations: Consistently risking or losing 2% or more of your account balance on a single trade—or on a series of correlated trades closed simultaneously—is considered improper risk management and is forbidden.

Specific Trading Rules

• Average Trade Duration: The average duration of all trades executed on your account must be greater than two minutes. Additionally, at least 50% of any requested profit must originate from trades that were held for longer than two minutes.
• News Trading Regulations:
  • Qualified Analyst Swing Accounts: News trading is permitted. However, if a trade is opened within the 4-minute window (2 minutes before to 2 minutes after a high-impact news event), it must remain open for more than 2 minutes to be considered valid.
  • Alpha Pro Accounts: Trading is restricted during the 4-minute window around high-impact news (2 minutes before and 2 minutes after).
  • Alpha One, Alpha Pro 6%, and Alpha Three Accounts: Trading is restricted during a 10-minute window around high-impact news (5 minutes before and 5 minutes after).
  • Evaluation Programs: News trading is permitted without any restrictions during all evaluation phases.

Maximum Lot Sizes (Funded Accounts)

The maximum permissible lot size depends on your account type and balance.

• For Alpha One, Alpha Pro, Alpha Pro 6%, and Alpha Three Accounts:
  • $5k: 2.5 lots
  • $10k: 5 lots
  • $25k: 10 lots
  • $50k: 20 lots
  • $100k: 40 lots
  • $200k: 80 lots
  • $300k: 120 lots
• For Alpha Swing Accounts:
  • $5k: 1.25 lots
  • $10k: 2.5 lots
  • $25k: 5 lots
  • $50k: 10 lots
  • $100k: 20 lots
  • $200k: 40 lots
  • $300k: 60 lots

Balanced and Analytical Trading Strategy

All trading activity must be based on proper market analysis. We prohibit strategies that rely on one-sided directional bets without justification. Furthermore, placing excessive volume in a short timeframe is considered gambling behavior and is not permitted.

Restriction on Excessive Scalping

While scalping is a valid trading method, excessive scalping is prohibited. This is defined as any account where 50% or more of the executed trades are held for less than one minute.

Prohibition of All-In Risk Taking

Committing a large portion of your account equity to a single trade or a series of correlated trades is a violation of our risk management policy. All positions must be opened with sound risk management, and trading without a stop-loss is strictly forbidden under this rule.

Policy on Revenge Trading

Engaging in "revenge trading," defined as entering a trade in the opposite direction shortly after closing a losing trade to recover losses, is prohibited. This behavior contradicts the principles of disciplined trading.

Account Activity Requirement

To maintain an active account status, you must place at least one trade within any 30-day period. Accounts without trading activity for 30 consecutive days are subject to suspension.

Position Stacking and Exposure Limits

Traders must adhere to our exposure limits. A maximum of 4 open positions per asset pair and a total of 7 open positions across all instruments are permitted at any one time. Any attempt to bypass this limit will be considered a violation.

Martingale Strategy Prohibition

The use of the Martingale strategy or any similar cost-averaging strategy that involves increasing position size after a loss is strictly prohibited.

Restrictions on Trading High-Impact News

To protect traders from extreme volatility, strict rules apply during high-impact news events (indicated by a red folder).

• Restricted Window: Do not open or close trades within the period of 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after the news release.
• Execution and Closure: This restriction applies to all forms of execution, including manual closures and positions where a Take Profit (TP) or Stop Loss (SL) is triggered during the restricted window.
• Stop-Loss Exception: A trade will not be considered a violation if the position was opened more than 6 hours before the news event and is subsequently closed by its stop-loss during the restricted window.

Copy Trading Guidelines

Copy trading is permitted for your personal accounts only.

Profit Consistency Rule

A 30% profit consistency rule applies to certain programs. Under this rule, your single highest-profit trading day cannot account for more than 30% of your total profits for that specific payout period. A payout cannot be requested until this condition is met.

Specific Rules for the Stock Program

The following practices are prohibited for traders in the Stock Program:

• Market Open/Close: No trading is allowed within the first 5 minutes after the market opens (from 14:30 UTC) or the last 5 minutes before it closes (after 20:55 UTC).
• Earnings Releases: Trading any stock is prohibited within the 5-minute window before and after its official earnings release.
• Prohibited Strategies: Martingale strategies and trading stock splits are not allowed.
• Mandatory Stop Loss: Placing a stop-loss is mandatory for every trade.
• Post-Loss Cooldown: After taking a loss on an asset, you must wait at least 5 minutes before trading the same asset again.
• Portfolio Diversity: Your portfolio cannot be composed solely of small-cap stocks when passing an evaluation or requesting a payout.

Tiered Lot Size System

Our platform utilizes a tiered lot size system that scales with your account balance. As your capital grows, your maximum allowable lot size increases, ensuring that your risk exposure remains proportional to your account size.

Maximum Lot Size by Asset Class

The table below details the maximum allowable lot size per trade based on your account balance.

Regulations on News Trading

The rules for trading during news events are specific to your account type:

Hyper-Growth & Bootcamp Accounts: Trading during news is permitted. However, using bracket strategies, such as placing opposing pending orders around a news release, is forbidden.

High Stakes Accounts: A strict blackout period is enforced. No trades may be executed in the window of 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after a high-impact news event.

Guidelines for Copy Trading

Copy trading is permitted on select accounts, subject to these limitations:

Eligible Accounts: Allowed for High Stakes and Hyper-Growth programs.

Capital Limit: Once a trader manages over $500,000 in total capital, copying trades between their accounts is no longer allowed.

Account Ownership: Copying from an external source is only permitted if the external account belongs to the same trader.

Third-Party Prohibition: The use of any third-party copy trading services or signals is strictly forbidden.

Bootcamp Restriction: Copy trading between two separate Bootcamp accounts is not permitted.

Rules for Using Expert Advisors (EAs)

The use of Expert Advisors (EAs) is allowed on all programs, including Bootcamp and Hyper-Growth, as long as they comply with the following conditions. Violation of these rules will result in account cancellation and a ban without a refund.

Mandatory Stop Loss: Every position opened by an EA must include a Stop Loss (SL) order.

Prohibited Activities: EAs must not perform any of the following:

Copying trades from another person's signals.

Tick scalping.

Latency, reverse, or hedge arbitrage.

Using emulators.

High Stakes Program: Minimum Trading Days

To pass this program, you must achieve a minimum of 3 profitable days. A day is considered profitable if the net result of all closed positions for that day is a gain of at least 0.5% of your initial account balance.

Risk Management Rules for Bootcamp

The following risk rules are strictly enforced for all Bootcamp accounts:

Mandatory Stop Loss: A stop-loss is required for every position and must be placed within 3 minutes of execution.

Maximum Risk: The stop-loss for any single position must not risk more than 2% of the total account balance.

Daily Pause: A 3% "soft breach" daily pause is applied during the funded stage to prevent further losses for the day.

Risk Violations: Failing to use a stop-loss or risking more than 2% on a trade counts as a risk violation. An accumulation of 5 risk violations will lead to automatic account termination.

General Trading Prohibitions

The following practices are strictly forbidden across all accounts:

One-Sided Betting: Consistently taking positions in one direction without valid market analysis.

Arbitrage: Exploiting any price discrepancies between feeds or markets.

News Bracketing: Placing pending orders around high-impact news to catch volatility.

System Exploitation: Taking advantage of platform errors, price feed delays, or other system inaccuracies.

Account Inactivity and Expiration

Accounts that have no new orders placed for 30 consecutive calendar days will be considered dormant and will expire automatically.

Maximum Position Size

To maintain proper risk control, the following maximum lot sizes per order are enforced:

• FX & Indices: 50 lots
• XAU/USD (Gold): 20 lots

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Independent Evaluation Principle

Each trading evaluation you undertake must be traded and completed independently. Your strategies and performance must be unique to each specific evaluation account.

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Server and Order Limits

To ensure system stability for all traders, the following limits are in place:

• Simultaneous Orders: You can have a maximum of 100 open orders at one time.
• Daily Modifications: You can make up to 2,000 modifications (e.g., TP/SL adjustments) per day.
• Daily Position Limit: A maximum of 2,000 total positions may be opened per day.

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Risk Management Policy 🛡️

You are prohibited from risking your entire account balance on a single trade. Trading styles deemed excessively risky or indicative of gambling are a violation of our terms and will lead to account termination with a full refund.

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Multi-Account Hedging Prohibition

Executing hedging strategies across multiple accounts is strictly forbidden, even if all accounts belong to the same trader.

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Comprehensive Copy Trading Rules

Trade copying is allowed but is subject to strict conditions to ensure our independent evaluation principle is met.

• Allowed ✅: You can copy trades between your own accounts. For example, you can copy from a personal master account to your funded E8 Trader account.
• Prohibited ❌: You are strictly forbidden from copying trades (manually or with EAs) between multiple E8 evaluation accounts. Each evaluation must be traded uniquely.

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Minimum Trade Duration (Anti-Scalping)

To prevent high-frequency scalping strategies, you cannot have more than 50% of your total trades last for a duration of less than one minute.

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Discretionary Risk Limits

If prohibited trading practices are detected, the firm reserves the right to de-risk your strategy by enforcing a maximum risk exposure of no more than 2% per trade idea or time horizon.

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Expert Advisor (EA) Policy 🤖

The use of Expert Advisors (EAs) is permitted, but your trading strategy must be unique. We limit one distinct strategy per user. If our system detects multiple users executing identical trades with the same third-party EA, it will be flagged as a violation, which may lead to account termination. We recommend using your own proprietary EA.

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News Trading Rules 📰

The rules for trading during high-impact news events differ based on your account stage:

• Evaluation Accounts: News trading is fully permitted.
• Funded Accounts: Trading is prohibited within the window of 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a high-impact news release.

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Signature Program: Trading Hours

For traders in the Signature Program, holding positions overnight or over the weekend is not allowed. All positions must be closed before the market closes on Friday.

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Account Inactivity Policy

An account will be automatically disabled after 60 consecutive days of inactivity (no new trades placed). Once an account is disabled, there is no entitlement to a refund.