At a glance
Exploitation, abusive trading practices and unreasonable risk-taking are prohibited and may result in review and action under the account terms. Ordinary trading is not restricted, and the same prohibitions apply on evaluation and funded accounts alike. Profitable trading, or a short trade that worked, is not on its own a prohibited practice.
The prohibited practices are set out in our Terms (clause 11.1) and summarised below in three groups: strategy, automation and account ownership. The list in the Terms is illustrative, not exhaustive: the Terms also let us treat other conduct as prohibited where, acting reasonably, we assess it as manipulative, abusive or in bad faith (clause 11.2).
Key rule: Rule outcomes are not prohibited practices. A news-window profit deduction, the weekend or holiday close on some funded accounts, or the best-day limit on a funded Flash account is how a rule works . None of them is a finding against you.
What is prohibited, and what you may do instead
Strategy
Prohibited | Allowed instead |
Trading on platform or price-feed errors, bugs, or clearly wrong prices. | Ordinary trading is not restricted. |
Latency, feed, reverse or hedge arbitrage, or exploiting slow, delayed or outside data feeds. | |
Tick scalping, churning, or any strategy built to exploit simulated execution rather than show trading skill. | Legitimate short-term trading is allowed, and there is no minimum trade duration. If your approach is very short-term, describe it to us before you trade. |
Exploiting price gaps around scheduled high-impact news or market open and close, in breach of the published rules. | During an evaluation, news trading is never on its own a reason for review, and news trading is free. On a funded account you may hold through news, within the news-window conditions. Holding overnight on weekdays is allowed on every account; weekend and holiday holding depends on the account. |
Coordinated or group trading, or opposite, mirrored or offsetting positions across accounts, whether yours or other people's. | |
Hedging between accounts, with the same or different owners, to get around the consistency, best-day or loss-limit rules. | |
Over-leveraging, one-sided all-in bets, account rolling, abusive martingale or grid strategies, and all-or-nothing gambling-style trading. | There is no mandatory stop-loss, subject to our risk-management and trading rules. The Terms prohibit martingale or grid strategies used abusively, as well as over-leveraging and all-in bets. If you plan to use either strategy, ask us first. |
Anything that would be unlawful market conduct in a live market, such as trading on inside information or front-running. |
Automation and copying
Prohibited | Allowed instead |
High-frequency trading, and automated tools that place orders faster than a human could or that overload or slow the platform. | An Expert Advisor you developed yourself, or a third-party tool that only manages risk or execution (Terms §10.3). Nothing may place orders faster than a human could, and high-frequency trading and latency arbitrage are not allowed (Terms §11.1). |
Off-the-shelf, purchased, rented or "challenge-passing" EAs, and copy or account-management services used to farm rewards (Terms clauses 10.3 and 11.1). | |
Copying the trades of another person or any outside account, or following a third-party signal provider, copier or bridge (Terms clauses 10.1 and 10.4). | Same-direction copy trading between your own accounts, up to $500,000 in total across the linked accounts and only with tools we permit (Terms §10.2). |
Account ownership
Prohibited | Allowed instead |
Anyone other than you trading your account, sharing your login, or selling or transferring an account (Terms clause 4.1). | Holding several accounts yourself, as long as you trade each one yourself: up to 4 active 2-Step, 1-Step and Instant accounts in total, plus 1 active Flash. See Can someone else trade my account, or can I transfer it?. |
Paying, or being paid by, anyone outside EverFunded for signals, account management, copy trading, or for taking or passing an evaluation. | |
Any other manipulative, abusive or bad-faith conduct aimed at a pass or a reward other than by genuine simulated trading skill. | If a strategy is borderline, ask first. Describing it to us before you trade is always better than asking afterwards. |
The automation and copying conditions are set out in full in Using EAs, bots and copy trading.
What can follow
On a suspected or confirmed prohibited practice, the Terms allow any of these steps, proportionate to the conduct: a warning; cancelling or adjusting the affected trades and their simulated profit; declaring the account in breach and closing the evaluation; suspending or closing the account and linked accounts; forfeiting any prospective reward; and a permanent ban (clause 11.3). No refund is due when these steps are applied (clause 11.4). For fraud, collusion or serious or repeated prohibited practices, the Terms also provide for liquidated damages (clause 11.5).
Verified ineligible profit or payment errors may be reviewed and corrected under the account terms.
If you were told you broke one of these rules, that is a question about your account, so a person answers it and names the specific rule. See My account failed or was closed: what happened?.
Worked examples
Situation | Allowed? |
Buying EUR/USD at the same time on two of your own 2-Step accounts | Allowed: same-direction copy between your own accounts, within the conditions above |
Buying EUR/USD on one account and selling it on another, so that one of them is likely to pass | Prohibited: offsetting positions across accounts |
Holding a position through a news release on a funded account | Allowed. Profit on a trade opened or closed within 3 minutes before or after a high-impact release is ineligible and is deducted from your balance, unless the trade was opened at least 5 hours before that window and closed by a pre-set stop loss or take profit. That is a rule outcome, not a prohibited practice. See Can I trade around news events?. |
Trading a price you can see is wrong during a feed glitch | Prohibited: trading on price-feed errors |
Letting a friend, or a paid service, trade your evaluation | Prohibited: someone else trading your account |
Running an EA you wrote yourself | Allowed, within the EA conditions. See Using EAs, bots and copy trading. |
Related articles
Next step
If an action was taken on your account under these rules, message us in the chat and ask for a person, and give the account number. Never send your trading password or a login code. For formal complaints and every other way to reach us, see How to contact EverFunded support. The Terms are the governing text: see Our Terms, Risk Disclosure, privacy and other policies.