Forbidden Trading Practices

Understand Where the Line Is

At FTMO, part of our mission is to foster responsible and sustainable trading habits.

Following these rules is mandatory and is your main responsibility when participating in the Evaluation Process and the Signal Provider Program. In this section, you will find unwanted practices you need to be aware of when trading in a simulated environment. These rules are intended not only to help create habits that can be reasonably utilised when trading in actual markets with real money but also to protect our services from manipulative and abusive behaviour.

Forbidden Trading Practices

Practices that conflict with and violate FTMO trading rules

When performing simulated trading, you must not:

• knowingly or unknowingly use trading strategies that exploit errors in our Services, such as errors in the display of prices or delays in their updates, or an external or slow data feed;
• perform, alone or in concert with other persons — including between connected accounts, accounts held with various operators/providers, or accounts held with other members of the Program Group — simulated trades or combinations of trades for manipulative purposes, for example by simultaneously entering into opposite positions (with the exception of entering into such positions on a single simulated account);
• perform simulated trades in conflict with the FTMO US General Terms and Conditions or the Signal Provider Terms and Conditions (Signal Provider Agreement) (as applicable) or the terms and conditions of the trading platform you use;
• use any software, artificial intelligence, ultra-high-speed tools, or mass data entry that might manipulate, abuse, or give you an unfair advantage;
• perform gap trading (a high-risk practice that carries potentially unfavourable outcomes if performed in real market conditions due to increased volatility) by opening simulated trades:
  • when major global news, macroeconomic events, or corporate reports or earnings are scheduled and they might affect the relevant financial market (i.e., a market that allows trading of financial instruments potentially impacted by the events); or
  • two hours or less before a relevant financial market is closed for at least two hours;
• otherwise perform simulated trades that contradict how trading is actually performed in the financial markets, or in a way that we reasonably consider might cause us financial, reputational, or other harm as a result of your activities (e.g., overleveraging, overexposure, one-sided bets, account rolling). For the avoidance of doubt, these practices are described in detail here;
• perform simulated trades that are operated or managed by automated robots / EAs (Expert Advisors) which cause the trading account to become hyperactive in the sense of an excessive number of more than 2,000 server requests per day on individual simulated trades or pending orders being opened, modified, or closed, causing overload of the trading server.

Risk Management Rules

Further, when performing simulated trades with us, you must not engage in practices which are not reasonably replicable in the actual market, meaning that such a strategy is not in line with risk management rules a reasonable person would apply when trading on financial markets with their own money. Market standard risk management rules include, as an example, avoiding:

• opening substantially larger position sizes compared to your other simulated trades, on any of your accounts; or
• opening a substantially smaller or larger number of positions compared to your other simulated trades, on any of your accounts; or
• undertaking repeated simulated trading activity that results in higher Risk per Trade Idea, thereby exposing your simulated account to cumulative exposure in a specific symbol or correlated symbols.

Rules Regarding Personal Use of the Services

Additionally, our services are intended for your personal use only. This means:

• You must not allow any third party to access or otherwise use your FTMO Rewards Account or your FTMO Challenge/Verification account, nor engage or cooperate with any third party in order to have such a third party perform simulated trades for you or in coordination with you;
• You must not access, or perform simulated trades on, any other person’s FTMO Rewards Account or FTMO Challenge/Verification account, nor may you engage or cooperate with any third party in order to perform simulated trades for another person on their FTMO Rewards Account or FTMO Challenge/Verification account, whether performed as a professional or otherwise;
• if you are a legal entity, you must not share access to your FTMO Rewards Account or your FTMO Challenge/Verification account with your employees except members of top management or another body with the highest executive authority.

Following all of the above rules is mandatory and remains your primary responsibility when using our services. Any breach or non-compliance with these rules may result in corrective actions, including, but not limited to, removal of simulated trades from your history, restricted access to a trading platform, disqualification from the Evaluation Process, forfeiture of any potential Rewards, or even termination of all agreements you have with us. To maintain a healthy and long relationship with us, please remember to treat the account responsibly by adopting legitimate trading strategies, safe risk management practices that are replicable in real markets, and are not intended to bypass the purpose of the Evaluation Process.