Almost nobody bans news trading outright. What firms do is subtler and more expensive: they let you trade, but define a window around the release in which your trades don't count the same.
And here's the trap that breaks accounts: at several firms the rule doesn't exist during the evaluation and appears the moment you're funded. You pass the challenge trading news freely, you build the habit on that strategy, and the first time you use it on a funded account is the time you break a rule.
There's a third variant that doesn't disqualify you: it takes the money. It counts only part of the profit you made inside the window and pays the rest as if it never happened. It never shows up as a violation — it shows up as a payout smaller than you expected.
"Prohibited" is the minority. The big category is the restricted window: you can trade, just not in the minutes around the release — and those minutes are exactly when the market moves.
This is the field that decides whether it hurts you. A rule that only exists in the funded phase gives you no warning: the evaluation teaches you that you can, and the funded account teaches you that you can't.
There are two very different punishments and it's worth knowing which one applies: losing the whole account, or losing only the profit from those trades. The second is more common than it looks, and far quieter.
What each firm says, with the link to its own page and the date we read it. If a rule changes, it changes here.
| Firm | Verified rule | Verified | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpha Capital Group | News trading is completely unrestricted during Alpha evaluation phases. Once you are a Qualified Analyst (funded) on Pro, One, Three or Direct, you may not open or close a trade - including via stop-loss/take-profit or any pending order - on a targeted instrument from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a listed release. Positions opened more than 5 minutes before may be held through it. Breaking it is a Soft Breach: the account survives but those profits earn no performance fee, while losses stay yours. Alpha's own channels disagree on how wide that window is: the help centre groups Pro 6%, 8% and 10% under the 5-and-5 window, while Alpha's own blog restricts Pro 8% and 10% to 2 minutes either side. Unresolved — we publish the wider window, which is the safer one to trade to. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| Apex Trader Funding | Apex lets you trade through releases as part of your normal strategy - there is no blackout window before or after events. What is banned is news-specific gambling: chasing the market on the release, or bracketing the event with orders on both sides. During a news event you may hold a position in only one direction, never both. Violations are prohibited activity, which forfeits the account and all balances. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| Bulenox | Bulenox publishes no news-trading rule anywhere on its own site. The full rule sets for the Qualification, Master and Funded accounts, the Warning page, the FAQ and the Terms of Use contain no restriction on trading around economic releases. | 2026-09-07 | Source |
| E8 Markets | The restriction applies only to E8 One and E8 One Crypto, and only in the funded SimFi Performance stage - phase-1 challenge trading is unrestricted, and E8 Zero, Signature and Pro have no news restriction at all. On a restricted account you cannot open or close trades, modify SL/TP, or use buy/sell stops from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a high-impact release. Violating it does not kill the account - the profits are automatically deducted when you request a payout. | 2026-09-07 | Source |
| Earn2Trade | Earn2Trade explicitly permits trading through economic releases, with no blackout window and no excluded events. The permission is stated for the Evaluation phase and is marked as an included feature on the Evaluation, LiveSim and Live accounts alike. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| Elite Trader Funding | On Elite (sim-funded) accounts the Terms of Service require you to be flat from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after certain major news events. Traders still in the evaluation phase are explicitly exempt. Note that ETF own help-center article says the opposite - no restrictions at all - so treat this as a firm to confirm with support before trading a release. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| FTMO | You can trade news freely throughout the FTMO Challenge and Verification - the restriction only starts on a funded FTMO Account, and only on Standard accounts (Swing is exempt everywhere). On a funded Standard account you must not open or close a trade, or have a pending order/SL/TP trigger, on a targeted instrument within 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after a listed event. Positions opened more than 2 minutes beforehand may be held through it, and non-targeted instruments are unaffected. | 2026-09-15 | Source |
| Funded Trading Plus | Funded Trading Plus explicitly allows news trading, with no time window, no blackout and no profit deduction around releases, in both evaluation and funded. What it does police is the risk taken around news, assessed at withdrawal, scaling and evaluation-pass checkpoints. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| FundedNext | FundedNext lets you trade the news with no blackout, but on a funded account only 40% of any profit made in the 10-minute window around a listed high-impact release - 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after - is credited to you. The other 60% is never paid. Losses in that same window count against you at 100%. Challenge phases are exempt entirely. | 2026-09-16 | Source |
| FundingPips | On the standard models the evaluation stage has no restriction on holding trades. What FundingPips' own page does not settle is the penalty for trading a release: one sentence says "Purposely trading news in both evaluation and master phase is prohibited and will lead to account closure", another says profits from trades in the restricted window "may be deducted". The only word separating losing a trade's profit from losing the account is "purposely", which the page never defines. Unresolved, and we do not pick a side — plan on the penalty being the whole account. Where the deduction applies, on the funded Master account, a trade opened or closed within 5 minutes either side of a red-folder release on the affected currency loses its ENTIRE profit, not just the part earned in the window, unless the position was opened at least 5 hours before the event. FundingPips Zero is stricter: no position may be opened, closed or even held within 10 minutes either side, and that is a hard breach. | 2026-09-16 | Source |
| FXIFY | On FXIFY main 1-Phase, 2-Phase and 3-Phase accounts news trading is fully allowed - no blackout window, only a warning that fills may slip and that reckless news risk can get you banned for improper risk management. Two other products differ: on Instant Funding Lite and on Crypto accounts you may not open or close anything from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a high-impact release. Trades caught in the blackout are invalidated - the profit is stripped, the loss is not. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| Instant Funding | During challenge Phase 1 and 2 you can trade news freely. Once funded - and on all Instant Funding / GO / Clarity accounts, which are funded from day one - you cannot execute in the 8-minute window from 4 minutes before to 4 minutes after a major release; market orders, pending orders and even SL/TP triggers are blocked there. Profit made in that window is deducted and you get up to two warnings before the third violation breaches the account, unless you buy the Major News Trading add-on. | 2026-09-07 | Source |
| Lucid Trading | Lucid allows news trading with no blackout window on LucidFlex, LucidPro and LucidDirect — you may open or close positions around scheduled and unscheduled events, at your own risk of slippage and velocity-logic triggers. The new LucidDaily funded account is the exception: trading US high-impact red-folder news there is a hard breach, and you must be flat from 1 minute before to 1 minute after the event. | 2026-08-16 | Source |
| Maven Trading | On Maven standard challenge and funded accounts you may not open OR close a trade within 2 minutes before or after a red-folder Forex Factory release for the related instrument - including a take-profit firing inside the window, even on a position opened earlier. Profit made inside the window is not credited in either phase, and an evaluation passed on the back of such trades will not be passed. On Instant accounts Maven's own channels disagree: its FAQ and support article state "The News rule does not apply to our instant accounts", while its Terms & Conditions state that the 2-minute rule applies "For all accounts". Unresolved, and we do not pick a side — but the T&C is the document that governs a dispute, so assume the window applies on Instant too. OMO has only a 0.50%-of-balance profit cap when funded; Buy Now Pay Later permits news throughout. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| MyFundedFutures | MyFundedFutures requires no positions AND no resting orders in the book from 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after any data release - every account, every scheduled release. On top of that, Tier 1 events (FOMC meetings and minutes, the Employment Report and CPI, plus EIA for energy and agricultural reports) may not be traded at all on Rapid Sim Funded and Pro Sim Funded; evaluations and the 25k/50k Flex plans may trade T1. | 2026-09-15 | Source |
| Take Profit Trader | Take Profit Trader bans holding positions or resting orders across a short list of named news events, but only on funded accounts. You must be flat with no working orders from one minute before until one minute after FOMC, NFP, CPI, Crude Oil Inventories (crude only) and 10Y/30Y bond auctions (bonds only). During the paid Test phase the firm own FAQ says news trading is allowed. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| The5ers | The5ers news rule depends on the program. On High Stakes you may hold positions through news, but you may not have ANY order executed (market, stop or limit) from 2 minutes before to 2 minutes after a high-impact ForexFactory red-folder release in the related currency or index - that is a soft breach, profits from it are deducted and do not count toward your target, and losses stay yours. On Hyper Growth and Bootcamp news trading is allowed outright, the only exception being bracket strategies around the release. | 2026-09-25 | Source |
| Topstep | Topstep does not restrict trading around economic releases: you are not required to flatten positions before news in either SIM/evaluation or Funded accounts, and there is no time window. The one hard limit is a conduct rule - deliberately putting your full maximum position size into a scheduled major news event is a prohibited strategy. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| TradeDay | TradeDay bans trading tier 1 data releases and enforces it mechanically: the platform auto-liquidates all open positions 2 minutes before each tier 1 release and reopens the market 2 minutes after. Named events are FOMC minutes and rate decision, US CPI, US employment/NFP, crude oil and natural gas inventories, and crop production reports. An accidental breach does not fail you, but profits made trading tier 1 releases are forfeited on payout. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
| Tradeify | Tradeify's own pages disagree on whether it restricts news trading, and we do not resolve the disagreement. Its dedicated rules article, updated 2026-04-02, says there are no rules or guidelines around trading news events, in any phase: no blackout window, no list of restricted events, only a warning that you trade news at your own risk, that slippage can fill you far from your expected price, and that the Daily Loss Limit will not reliably act as a stop loss in extreme volatility. Its Essential Trading Rules Overview instead lists news trading under “Restrictions: Specific rules around major economic events”, and links to a full policy that turns out to be the article saying no policy exists. Our planning assumption, not Tradeify's statement: follow the dedicated article, the more specific and more recently dated of the two, but treat a restriction around major releases as possible until the firm aligns the two pages. | 2026-07-28 | Source |
It depends on the firm, but it's almost always a short list of high-impact releases: rate decisions, inflation and employment. What matters is that the list is theirs and is in writing — not one from whatever calendar you happened to find.
Usually a couple of minutes to five on each side — but watch out: before and after aren't always equal. Several firms close a longer window before the release than after, and that asymmetry is what catches people.
Usually yes. Most rules trigger on holding a position through the release, not just on opening one inside the window. Check whether the wording says "open" or "hold" — that's the difference between closing beforehand and not being allowed anything open at all.