TL;DR
Five of the six supported firms enforce some flavour of news lockout; only FTMO Phase 1 explicitly permits holding through release (with a dominant-source caveat). The workarounds that pass review: scheduled deactivation, instrument switching, news-aware EA filtering, and split-execution. Manual-override is fragile and usually fails the review.
A trader sets up a clean EA on a fresh FundingPips Zero challenge. The strategy is a London-session breakout, opens 9:30 GMT, closes by 11:00 GMT, doesn't touch news windows in principle. Three weeks in, the strategy passes the target. Four days into funded, a position is open at 12:28 GMT when CPI releases at 12:30. The trade catches the volatility, exits 2R green, the operator high-fives. Two days later FundingPips emails: account disqualified, news-trading violation, no review possible. That's the world prop traders are working in.
What "news-lockout" actually means at each firm
| Firm | Window | Rule shape | EA implications |
|---|---|---|---|
| FundingPips Zero | ±2 min | Hard ban on positions through release | EA must close before −2, not re-open until +2 |
| FTMO Phase 1 | permitted | "Dominant source" review at payout | EA can hold but news must not be the main profit source |
| MyForexFunds | ±2 min | Hard ban; aggressive payout-review enforcement | EA must filter calendar; demo it |
| Apex Trader Funding | ±2 min | Soft, usually triggered only on size-anomaly trades | EA fine on standard sizes during release windows |
| The5ers High Stakes | ±2 min | Hard ban + consistency rule + payout review | EA must filter; news win may breach consistency too |
| GetLeveraged Turbo | ±2 min | Hard ban; payout-review enforcement | EA must filter calendar |
The four workarounds that hold up
1. Scheduled deactivation
The simplest workaround: an EA-side schedule that blocks trade opens during a precomputed list of high-impact events. The EA fetches the Forex Factory calendar at start-of-day (or weekly), filters for red-folder events, and holds an active-positions check that closes existing positions T minus 5 minutes before any red event and re-opens trading T plus 5 minutes after. Survives every firm review because the log shows the EA voluntarily flattened ahead of the window. Fail mode: holiday-shifted events that don't make the original calendar (Bank of Japan announcements, in particular, drift); rebuild the calendar daily, not weekly.
2. Instrument switching
Most firms' news-trading rules apply only to the currency of the news event (USD for CPI, GBP for BoE, EUR for ECB). An EA that's holding EURUSD during USD CPI is in breach; an EA that's holding GBPJPY during USD CPI is not (CPI doesn't directly affect GBPJPY). For multi-pair strategies, the workaround is to filter out the affected pair for the news window but keep trading uncorrelated pairs. The implementation: every event in the calendar gets tagged with affected currencies; the EA evaluates each position against the event's currency tag and only flattens the affected ones. Fail mode: cross-impact (GBPJPY does react to USD events via the USD leg of the cross, the rule is currency-pair-direct, but the firm sometimes reviews on instrument-spirit rather than letter). Conservative: flatten everything during top-tier events (NFP, FOMC, CPI), use instrument filtering for tier-2.
3. News-aware EA filtering
The most sophisticated path: the EA exposes a news-filter property that subscribes to a live calendar (DailyFX, ForexFactory.com, or a paid provider) and dynamically halts new entries when within N minutes of a release. The advantage over scheduled deactivation: the EA can keep trading right up to T minus 1 minute and resume at T plus 1 minute, instead of the 5-minute conservative buffer. The disadvantage: the EA depends on a calendar source that can fail; if the calendar API is down at the moment of release, the EA defaults to "no filter" and the operator is exposed.
4. Split execution (FTMO-style hedge)
A strategy that wants to express a view through news (rather than around it) runs two accounts: one at FTMO where holding through news is permitted, and one at FundingPips/MFF/The5ers where it's banned. The news-active strategy runs only at FTMO; the news-flat strategy runs at the other firms. The two accounts are diversified by rule-set rather than by direction. Net: the operator can capture news edges without losing the alternative firms to disqualification.
Implementation pattern for cBots + EAs
The Glitch Executor Strategy IR includes a built-in "schedule" block that handles news lockout natively: <code>schedule: { newsLockoutMinutes: 5, source: "forexfactory" }</code>. Compiled to a cBot for cTrader or an MQL5 EA, the IR generates the calendar-fetch + position-close logic for the operator. The IR also encodes the firm-specific rule so the same strategy compiled for FTMO doesn't add the unnecessary lockout, while compiled for FundingPips it does. That's the kind of per-firm correctness most off-the-shelf EAs ignore.
A note on news-trading "strategies"
Most operators who get caught by news-lockout weren't trying to trade news at all, they had an unrelated strategy that happened to hold a position through release. If you actively want to trade news (i.e., enter or exit specifically around release windows), the only sensible firm in the supported set is FTMO Phase 1, and you should read the "dominant source" rule carefully before committing capital. Genuine news strategies belong on FTMO; everywhere else, news avoidance is the goal.
Citations
FAQ
- What counts as "high-impact news" at most firms?
- The Forex Factory red-folder classification is the de facto standard: NFP, CPI, FOMC, ECB, BoE rate decisions, GDP, unemployment-claims-as-primary. Tier-2 events (PMI, retail sales) are usually outside the lockout but still on the radar.
- Can I leave the EA running during news if it's not entering trades?
- Depends on the firm. FundingPips, MFF, The5ers, and GetLeveraged enforce the rule against any open position regardless of when it was opened. Apex generally only triggers review on size-anomaly trades during release. FTMO permits holding-through.
- How far before a release should my EA flatten positions?
- 5 minutes is the conservative number that covers all six firms. The strict letter is ±2 minutes at most firms; the 5-minute buffer accommodates calendar drift, position-close slippage on fast moves, and the rare case of an event being moved up by 60 seconds.
- Does this rule apply to manually placed trades too?
- Yes, most firms' news-trading clauses apply to all positions on the account, not just EA-placed. Manual override doesn't exempt you.
- What about EAs that specifically harvest news volatility (like grid-on-spike)?
- These are explicitly prohibited at every firm in the supported set. FTMO's "permitted" clause does NOT extend to strategies whose dominant source is news; it extends to strategies that incidentally hold through release.
- Where do I see the firm's exact news-trading rule text?
- Linked from each per-firm page on Glitch Executor and direct in the firm's terms of service. We re-audit the news clauses quarterly because firms revise them more often than the drawdown rules.
How we maintain accuracy
Reviewed by Ryan Tran, Strategy Lead, Glitch Executor. Every quantitative claim cites a primary source; firm-rule values come from the firm-rule registry audited quarterly in this repo. No paid placements, no fabricated reviews.
Post last reviewed . Tier 1 surface last reviewed .
Written by Lena Park
Broker Integration · Glitch ExecutorWrites on cTrader / TradeLocker / DXtrade / MetaApi integration, latency, and the parts of broker bridges that break at 2am.
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