Prohibited Trading Practices

Important: The rules on this page apply to all our products. Individual products may have additional or different trading rules — a practice restricted here may be permitted, or restricted differently, on a specific product. Please always check the trading rules for the product you bought: product-specific trading rules. Where a product-specific rule differs from this page, the product-specific rule applies to that product.

What do these trading rules cover?

They cover how you are allowed to trade on your Demo Trading Account: the practices that are not permitted, what we expect in terms of responsible trading, and what happens if a rule is broken.

Where do I find my profit target, loss limits and other objectives?

Your Product Parameters (account size, loss limits, leverage, etc.) and Product Objectives (profit target, minimum trading days, consistency rules, etc.) are not listed on this page. They depend on the product you bought and are published on the relevant product page:

• CFDs: https://www.thetradingpit.com/cfds-prop-trading
• Futures: https://www.thetradingpit.com/futures
• Stocks: https://info.thetradingpit.com/en-gb/the-stocks-challenge

What is the basic rule?

You can trade however you like on your Demo Trading Account, as long as you don't use any of the prohibited practices listed below and you follow normal, sensible risk management. Your selected trading platform may also apply its own additional rules on top of these.

Which trading practices are not allowed?

• Taking advantage of platform glitches — using pricing errors, mispriced quotes, or data feed delays to generate results that don't reflect genuine trading. It doesn't matter whether this was done on purpose: affected trades can still be excluded from your results.
• Using outside price feeds — trading based on external or delayed data feeds to get an edge over the price shown on our platform.
• Manipulating your results with other accounts — coordinating trades with other accounts (your own, someone else's, or accounts linked to us) to distort your results, for example opening opposite positions on two accounts at the same time.
• Arbitrage — exploiting price differences between our platform and other markets or data feeds, or between different feeds on our own platform.
• High-frequency trading — strategies where most trades are closed within a few seconds.
• Trading around market gaps — opening positions in anticipation of a price gap, whether that's around a major economic event or a scheduled market closure of two hours or more.
• Trading around news releases — placing trades in anticipation of a high-impact news release. Specifically, opening or closing a position within two minutes before or after such a release is not allowed.
• Copying other traders — copying someone else's trades, or coordinating trades with another trader or account.
• Unrealistic trading volumes — trading an unreasonably large number of lots or contracts in a single day.
• Shrinking your position size to game the rules — using much smaller trade sizes right after a large trade purely to tick the box on a minimum trading days requirement.
• Rollover/swap exploitation — exploiting the simulated overnight interest (rollover/swap) mechanics on currency pairs.
• Trading that isn't a real strategy — trading in a way that looks like guessing or gambling rather than following a genuine, risk-based strategy.
• Expert Advisors (EAs) with certain functions — see the next question.
• Interfering with our systems — using any technology that interferes with our network or platform operation.
• Misusing AI or automation — using AI, automated trading systems, ultra-fast tools, or mass data entry to manipulate the platform, get around our monitoring, or gain an unfair advantage.
• Anything else that undermines fair trading — any other trading that goes against normal market practice, or that puts at risk the integrity of the platform, the simulation, your data, or our business model, for example excessive leverage, overexposure, one-sided bets, or "rolling" an account.

Are Expert Advisors (EAs) and automated tools allowed?

Yes, EAs are allowed — but not if they perform tick scalping, latency arbitrage, reverse arbitrage, hedge arbitrage or rollover scalping, use emulators, or copy other traders' trades. EAs that several traders run at the same time to produce identical results are also not allowed.

What does trading responsibly mean in practice?

On top of the list above, we also expect you to trade sensibly:

• Don't risk a disproportionate share of your account balance on a single position.
• Don't over-concentrate on one trade or a tiny handful of trades without any diversification.
• Don't trade in a way that looks like random chance rather than a considered, risk-based strategy.

Do you monitor trading activity?

Yes. We may review trading behaviour from time to time. If we find a breach of these rules or principles, we may take action as described below.

What happens if I break these rules?

If we find, or reasonably suspect, that you've broken any of these rules, we may take one or more of the following steps:

• Treat your Challenge as failed and not let you move to the Funded Phase
• Remove the affected trades from your results so they don't count
• Adjust your risk parameters, objectives, or reward eligibility
• End your Product immediately, without notice
• If it happens more than once after we've already warned you, permanently block your access to some or all of our services (no refund in that case)

Can these rules change?

Yes. This list can be updated or added to at any time — please check this page for the latest version.

Where can I find the full legal wording? 

 Please refer to Clause 6 and Schedule B of our General Terms and Conditions.