Trading hours and core trading rules

Daily close times, news restrictions and the rules that apply to every strategy.

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Close before the daily cutoff

Eval and sim-funded accounts must be flat by 4:45 PM Eastern Time, Monday through Friday. Positions are automatically closed at the cutoff; that scheduled close is not itself a breach. Trading reopens at 6:00 PM ET for the next trading session when the market is open.

Do not hold positions through the daily close or over the weekend. Exchange holiday and early-close schedules can end trading earlier. Eastern Time changes with U.S. daylight saving time. Live accounts follow their separate live trading schedule.

Rules to check before trading

  • Stay within your account's MLL, DLL and position size.
  • BoxcarPayout funded accounts must be flat one minute before through one minute after high-impact USD news.
  • Automation, trade copying and scaling into positions are allowed, but do not exempt a trade from any rule.
  • Holding long and short positions in the same exact contract is prohibited. Across accounts, opposing positions in the same or correlated products are prohibited.
  • Within one Eval or sim-funded account, opposing mini/micro pairs and opposing positions in different products are allowed. These exceptions do not carry over to live accounts.
  • High-frequency trading and prohibited microscalping are not allowed.

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