At SFX Funded, we seek talented traders who can bring their own systems and strategies to provide us with unique, high-quality trading data as part of our research and development of proprietary trading strategies. Unsurprisingly, the most valuable data comes from consistently profitable traders who manage their risk effectively and maintain their funded trading accounts for extended periods. In contrast, data from high-risk traders, who experience rapid gains and losses and often keep their funded accounts for only days or even hours, is less valuable to us.
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We are dedicated to rewarding consistent traders and fully committed to supporting them throughout their trading journey.

To ensure fairness and integrity, certain trading practices that exploit our system are strictly prohibited and violate our Terms and Conditions. This applies to both our evaluation phases and funded accounts as soon as they are identified. We want to be clear with our rules so that those who trade fairly and responsibly are rewarded.

While our program accommodates a broad range of trading strategies, certain trading methods are prohibited as they lead to a breach of our terms and conditions.

If your account is found to be abusing the system and violating trading rules, the contract may be terminated without notice, and you will be permanently banned from SFX Funded, with no refund policy.

Gamble to Pass

To prevent gambling behaviour, promote responsible trading practices, and accurately assess traders' performance in our funding programs, it is prohibited to attempt to pass evaluations or trade funded accounts using high-risk gambling tactics for any one trade taken.

"Gamble to pass" refers to a trading approach where traders:

This approach is essentially gambling, relying on luck rather than skill and consistent performance.

To progress to the next level, traders must show consistent trading activity over the assessment period. Responsible trading involves a balanced approach, considering both potential rewards and risks.

Opposite Direction Recovery Strategy
This strategy involves attempting to recover from a losing trade by immediately opening a new position in the opposite direction of the original loss. Traders using this method hope for a quick reversal of the outcome. However, this approach compromises the data we use to evaluate your consistency, risk management, and trading discipline. It circumvents the core skills we aim to assess, such as thoughtful decision-making and strategic planning. As a result, this strategy is prohibited. Engaging in it may lead to consequences such as a restart from Phase 1, a hard breach, or denial of payout, depending on your risk profile as determined by our risk team.

Churning of Accounts

Churning of accounts occurs when clients buy multiple accounts and engage in high-risk trading, attempting to quickly reach profit targets without proper risk management or consistent trading performance.

In this scenario, traders acquire several accounts at the maximum allowed amount and succeed in passing them. This behaviour results in traders taking overly risky trades on the first account, believing that if they breach that account, they can immediately move on to the next account.

Our data shows that a responsible trader should be able to trade effectively and pass each of our Evaluation Accounts within two weeks under typical conditions.

Poor Money Management

Traders regularly facing margin calls due to insufficient funds or overly risky positions demonstrate poor risk management. This behaviour jeopardizes not only their own accounts but also the firm's overall stability and will not be tolerated.

Overtrading

Overtrading, characterized by frequently entering and exiting trades without a clear strategy or rationale, is prohibited. This practice does not demonstrate a sound understanding of the market and poses significant risks, leading to reduced profitability and, more often than not, the loss of the account.

One-Sided Bets

One-sided bets involve taking positions in a single direction without considering market conditions or conducting proper analysis.

For instance, a trader might open long positions on a currency pair, assuming it will continue to rise indefinitely, regardless of market conditions or contrary indicators. This approach ignores essential risk management principles and can lead to significant losses.

Also, leaving a position open until it reaches the profit target without trade management is prohibited. Unlike swing trading, where the position is actively managed throughout its duration, this strategy neglects active trade management.

This lack of trade management can result in unnecessary risks and substantial losses if the market moves unfavourably.

Group Hedging

Group hedging occurs when multiple traders collectively coordinate their positions to hedge risk across their accounts.

For example, one trader might take a long position while another takes a short position on the same asset across two or more accounts. This strategy neutralizes the risk for the group but exploits the system's rules.

This practice skews the true assessment of individual trading abilities and creates an unfair advantage, compromising the integrity of the trading environment.

To maintain fairness and transparency, group hedging is strictly prohibited. Each trader's performance should be evaluated based on their individual merits.

Multi-Account Reverse Trading

Multi-Account Reverse Trading is a strategy where trades from a primary account are mirrored or replicated in reverse on multiple other accounts. This can be done either automatically or manually. Essentially, if the primary account takes a long position, the connected accounts take a short position, and vice versa.

This practice is prohibited because it involves strategy manipulation that can exploit certain trading conditions and lead to unfair trading practices. A trader can hedge their risk and manipulate outcomes by taking opposing positions on the same asset in different accounts.

How It Works:

This strategy ensures that at least one account will profit regardless of market direction, creating an unfair advantage and distorting the true performance metrics.
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Behavioural & Inconsistent Trading Patterns

Inconsistent trading behaviours can lead to the non-approval of accounts the revokement of funded accounts and the denial of payouts.

This includes but is not limited to traders frequently changing trading strategies, behaviours, times and instruments and overall displaying irrational and erratic trading behaviour.

It can also include engaging in trades during non-liquid market hours to exploit liquidity shortages, consistently ignoring risk management principles, or making emotional trading decisions. These practices undermine a sound understanding of the market and pose significant risks to the trader and the firm.

Exploiting System Glitches

Trading strategies that exploit system errors, such as price display inaccuracies or updating delays, are strictly prohibited.

This trading style can occur when a trader identifies technical glitches on the trading platform that show incorrect price quotes for an asset and then places trades to profit from these inaccuracies before the error can be rectified. While rare, those should be reported to the platform rather than exploited.

Latency Arbitrage

Exploiting price differences or anomalies between various markets for identical or similar assets is strictly forbidden.

This practice, known as arbitrage trading, involves a trader capitalizing on price variations of the same asset across two different exchanges, making trades to benefit from these discrepancies.

High-Frequency Trading (HFT) & Ultra Fast Scalping
High-frequency trading (HFT), where most trades are executed within a few seconds or less by using sophisticated algorithms to place trades within seconds, thus capitalizing on minor price movements in the market, is prohibited.

Ultra-fast scalping, similar to regular scalping, involves making many small profits on price changes that occur within seconds or minutes. It is not allowed because no trade analysis can be carried out due to extremely short holding periods and rapid execution.

Tick-Scalping

Tick-based trading, which involves making trades based on every minor price movement or "tick" in the market, is prohibited.

This practice involves traders attempting to capitalise on the incremental movements defined by the tick size. Traders employing this approach focus on the smallest price fluctuations allowed by the tick size to make rapid and frequent trades.

Use of Emulators

The use of emulators in trading is strictly prohibited as they have the potential to replicate banned strategies or circumvent system protections, compromising the integrity and security of the trading environment.

While they replicate the operations of other programs and/or systems, they become particularly problematic when used with Expert Advisors (EAs).

Reverse Arbitrage Trading
Reverse arbitrage trading involves taking advantage of price discrepancies between markets in a manner opposite to traditional arbitrage.

In this strategy, a trader might sell an overvalued asset in one market while simultaneously buying the same asset in another market where it is undervalued. The goal is to profit from the price discrepancy as the markets adjust. This is prohibited.

Hedge Arbitrage Trading

Hedge arbitrage trading involves taking opposite positions in correlated assets or markets simultaneously to exploit price discrepancies and benefit from price differences across the same or different accounts.

For instance, a trader might buy an asset in one market while selling a similar asset in another market, aiming to profit from the small price variations.

News Bracketing Strategy

The bracketing strategy, which involves setting buy and sell pending orders around high-impact news events above and below the market price, is not allowed.

This method entails placing both buy and sell stop orders near the current price just before a significant economic announcement.

When the news is released, the ensuing volatility activates one of the orders, enabling the trader to capitalize on the price movement.

Martingale Trading

Martingale-style trading involves opening additional positions as the price moves against the initial trade direction. The goal is to recover losses and achieve a profit when the price eventually returns to the original entry point.

E.g. A trader opens multiple long positions on the GBP/USD pair at 1.35100, 1.3490, 1.34700, 1.3450) and then adds another long position at 1.3470 while already having multiple positions in drawdown.

This trading method is prohibited because it is only effective in a ranging market. When the price trends in one direction, this strategy inevitably leads to a margin call and the complete depletion of the trading account.

Grid Style Trading

Grid Trading is a strategy that involves placing multiple buy and sell orders at predetermined price levels, both above and below the current market price, creating a grid-like pattern on the trading chart.

The goal is to take advantage of price fluctuations within a certain range. As the market moves, these orders are triggered when the price hits the specified levels. Profitable trades in one direction can offset potential losses from trades in the opposite direction.

E.g. A trader sets up a grid trading strategy by placing buy orders at intervals of 20 pips (e.g., buying AUD/USD at 0.6700, 0.6720, 0.6740) and sell orders at intervals of 20 pips (e.g., selling AUD/USD at 0.6680, 0.6660, 0.6640) without a clear risk management plan or exit strategy.

This creates a grid of trades without appropriate risk management.

Order Layering

Order layering, which involves splitting a single position into multiple smaller trades, is considered an abusive practice as it exploits simulated market conditions by bypassing slippage and undermining the accurate replication of real market scenarios. Generally, placing more than four(4) layered orders based on the same trade idea will be categorized as prohibited activity. Such practices are regarded as attempts to manipulate the trading environment by artificially circumventing risk management protocols and distorting the intended simulation of real market dynamics. These actions violate our trading policies and compromise the integrity of our platform.

Engaging in any of the trading styles mentioned may result in one or more of the following actions:

1. Deduction of all profits.

2. Resetting accounts.

3. Issuance of a soft or hard breach.

4. Rejection of withdrawal requests.

5. Reduction of profit split to 20-25%.

6. Reduction in leverage to 1:10.

These actions are subject to the discretion of our risk management team and will be communicated directly to the trader.

A ‘trade’ is defined as a position held on a specific pair, which can include multiple entries with similar timings and lot sizes. Multiple entries on the same pair at the same time may count as one trade.

To check over everything in even more detail please visit our T&C Here.