News trading at prop firms: your questions answered
Are prop firms really allowing news trading again?
Yes, but not in the way the phrase suggests. Eight firms reviewed for this article impose no time window around high-impact releases on at least one product or phase. What has actually happened is that the penalty moved. In 2024 a news trade could terminate an account. In 2026 it is far more likely to be permitted, logged, and paid at a reduced rate.
Which firms have no news-trading window at all?
E8 Markets, FTMO Swing accounts, FundedNext challenge phases, Apex Trader Funding, Topstep, Take Profit Trader Test accounts, My Funded Futures evaluations and Builder Plans, and Goat Funded Trader. Each is covered with its exact rule and source below.
What changed between 2024 and 2026?
In April 2024, FX News Group reported that prop firms were increasingly restricting news trading, naming MyFundedFX, Funded Engineer and Blue Guardian. Two years later the direction reversed. When E8 Markets launched its one-step Zero account in July 2026, Finance Magnates described the industry’s direction of travel as “toward fewer rules, faster payouts and simpler drawdown math.”
How this list was verified
Every rule below was read on the firm’s own help centre or terms document, not on a comparison site. For each firm we recorded the exact wording, the scope (which products, which phase), and the date the page states it was last updated.
That method matters because most of what is published on this topic does not use one. The search results for “prop firms that allow news trading” are dominated by affiliate comparison tables that are un-bylined, undated, and title-stamped “2026” for freshness. One widely linked page indexed under a news-trading URL contains no news-trading content at all.
There is one genuine exception worth knowing about. PropFirm Beacon maintains a tracked dataset of 34 firms, re-checked monthly against each firm’s public rulebook, last verified 20 July 2026. Its news-trading split is 68% fully allowed, 32% limited or conditional, 0% not allowed. It does not name the 34 firms, and it says plainly that it is “not a census of the entire prop trading industry,” so treat it as a sample rather than a sector total. On the central question it agrees with what we found firm by firm: an outright ban has become hard to locate.
The 8 firms with no news-trading window in 2026
“No window” means the firm imposes no minutes-before and minutes-after lockout on opening or closing positions around a release. It does not always mean no consequence at all, and the third column is where most traders get caught.
| Firm | Rule as written | Where it applies | Source last updated |
|---|---|---|---|
| E8 Markets | No news restriction stated; the firm notes only that simulated slippage can be severe | E8 Signature, E8 Pro, the SimFi Challenge stage (including E8 One), and SimFi Performance under Signature or Pro. Restricted at the SimFi Performance stage on E8 One and E8 One Crypto | E8 help centre, updated within the last week |
| FTMO | Swing accounts “have no restrictions on trading during news releases” | Swing accounts at every stage, plus all Challenge and Verification phases on any account type | FTMO FAQ, 16 August 2026 |
| FundedNext | “FundedNext allows traders to trade during news events in both the Challenge Phase and the FundedNext Account” | Challenge phases, unrestricted. Funded accounts allowed but subject to the reward share described below | FundedNext help centre, 5 June 2026 |
| Apex Trader Funding | “Trading during news is allowed for your normal trading strategy” | All accounts. No evaluation or funded distinction stated. Placing orders on both sides of a release to gamble on the outcome is prohibited | Apex prohibited activities, 31 July 2026 |
| Topstep | “Topstep doesn’t require you to flatten positions during economic releases” | SIM and Funded accounts. The one related prohibition, listed separately, is deploying “your full Maximum Position Size directly into a scheduled major news event” | Topstep economic releases, 17 June 2026 |
| Take Profit Trader | “You’re allowed to trade the news, have no daily loss limits” | Test accounts only. PRO and PRO+ must be flat with no working orders one minute either side of listed events | Take Profit Trader FAQ |
| My Funded Futures | Tier 1 news trading is “prohibited for the following: Rapid Sim Funded, Pro Sim Funded” and permitted for “All evaluations, Builder Plans” | Evaluations and Builder Plans. On the two prohibited plans, no position or order may be open 2 minutes either side of a release. Other sim funded plans are not named in either list | MFFU news trading policy, updated 2 September 2026 |
| Goat Funded Trader | “Trading during news events is allowed and does not violate any Goat Funded Traders rules” | Challenge and funded phases alike. Profit inside a 10-minute window is capped at 1% of initial balance, with no breach or penalty | Goat Funded Trader help centre, 27 July 2026 |
Read the third column twice. Five of the eight permissions are scoped to a specific product or a specific phase. Only Apex, Topstep and Goat Funded Trader state a rule that covers their whole account range, and the first two of those are conduct rules judged after the fact rather than a bright line you can time.
If you are weighing any of these firms on more than their news policy, our funded-trader interviews cover the same names: FTMO, FundedNext, Apex Trader Funding, Topstep, Take Profit Trader and Goat Funded Trader.
The rule did not disappear, it moved to the money
The most important change of the past two years is not that firms stopped restricting news trading. It is that the restriction stopped killing accounts and started taking profits instead.
FundedNext is the clearest example, because both halves of the design sit on the same page. The firm allows news trading in the challenge phase and on the funded account. It then applies a News Reward Share Rule to funded accounts: profit from a trade executed within five minutes either side of a correlated high-impact event counts at 40%, while losses count at 100%. Permission granted, economics asymmetric.
The same pattern repeats with different numbers:
- Funding Pips Master accounts. Holding through news is fine, but profit from a trade opened or closed inside a 10-minute window is not counted, and the whole trade’s profit is removed rather than the portion earned in the window. A trade placed five or more hours before the event keeps its profit (Funding Pips help centre).
- AquaFunded. The firm publishes both regimes side by side. Accounts opened before 27 April 2026 fall under the previous rule: no news trading on funded accounts, no opening or closing 5 minutes either side of red-folder news, profit removed with no account violation. Accounts opened after that date may trade news, with profit capped at 0.5% of starting balance, the excess removed, and “no penalties, violations, or breaches applied” (AquaFunded help centre, 17 July 2026).
- Goat Funded Trader. A 1% profit cap in place of any prohibition, applied at account review, explicitly not a breach.
- Alpha Capital. A stop loss or take profit that fires inside the funded window is a soft breach: the profit becomes ineligible for a performance fee, the account survives, and the loss still stands (Alpha Capital help centre).
The trader-facing translation is short. Under the old regime a news trade could end your account. Under the new one it is legal, it is counted, and it pays less or nothing. The losses were never discounted.
Where the ban is still real
The trend is real but it is not universal, and the firms below would fail anyone who read a “news trading allowed” headline and stopped there.
| Firm | Restriction | Applies to | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Blueberry Funded | 2 minutes either side of red-folder news. Covers opening, closing, and pending-order triggers | Evaluation and earning accounts both. Exception for positions opened 6+ hours earlier whose stop loss is hit | Help centre, 17 June 2026 |
| Funding Pips Zero | 10 minutes either side, and it bans holding, not just transacting. Breach closes the Master account | The Zero product only. On the standard models, holding through news in evaluation is unrestricted, but the firm separately prohibits deliberately trading a release in either phase | Help centre |
| FTMO Standard | 2 minutes either side on listed events, including pending order, stop loss and take profit execution | Funded Standard accounts. Swing accounts exempt, evaluation exempt | FTMO FAQ, 16 August 2026 |
| E8 One and E8 One Crypto | Opening, closing, stop loss and take profit fills and pending orders all prohibited 5 minutes either side. News-based strategies including straddles and strangles are “NOT permitted” | The SimFi Performance (funded) stage only. The challenge stage is unrestricted | E8 help centre |
| TradeDay | The platform auto-liquidates all open positions 2 minutes before each Tier 1 release. You cannot breach it by accident | Scope not broken out by account stage on the cited page | TradeDay support, 7 July 2025 |
| Maven Trading | 2 minutes either side. Auto-close features and take profit hits count as violations | Profits not credited in the challenge phase or the live phase. The firm states the news restriction does not apply to instant funding accounts | Maven support |
The5ers sits between the two tables and is worth separating out. On High Stakes, executing an order 2 minutes either side of a high-impact release is prohibited and any profit is deducted as a soft breach. On Instant Funding (Hyper-Growth) and Bootcamp, the firm states news trading is allowed except for bracket strategies around news. Holding open trades through news is permitted on all programs (The5ers FAQ, 10 August 2026).
The rule that will actually cost you
On the futures side, the news policy is usually not the thing that ends your account. The trailing drawdown is.
Apex and Take Profit Trader both compute an intraday trailing drawdown from peak balance including unrealised profit. A release spikes in your favour, the threshold ratchets up to the new high water mark, price retraces, and the account is liquidated without you having closed a single trade. Neither firm restricts news trading on the accounts named above. Both can still take the account off you on an NFP print.
There is a second-order trap on the same firms. Apex applies a consistency requirement under which no single trading day may account for more than 50% of total accumulated profit at the time of a payout request (Apex help centre). A large, legal, permitted news win can therefore block the payout it produced. Topstep separately advises traders to stop trading a product once it comes within 2% of a price limit, on the grounds that “market conditions are extreme and execution is unreliable” (Topstep help centre), which is exactly the condition a major release creates.
This is the pattern that makes single-column comparison tables misleading. Permission and exposure are set by different rules, and only one of them mentions news.
What to check before you trade a release
Six questions, answerable from any firm’s help centre in under ten minutes:
- Which calendar is authoritative? Every firm names its own. FTMO tags “Restricted event” in its own calendar, Funding Pips calls its dashboard calendar the only official source, The5ers and Goat Funded Trader use Forex Factory red folders. Do not substitute your own.
- Which phase are you in? At FTMO, FundedNext, Funding Pips, Alpha Capital, E8 Markets and Take Profit Trader, the evaluation rule and the funded rule are different rules.
- Which product did you buy? Funding Pips lets standard-model evaluation traders hold through a release while banning Zero traders from holding within 10 minutes either side of one. FTMO exempts Swing and restricts Standard. E8 exempts Signature and Pro and restricts One at the funded stage.
- Does a stop loss or take profit count as an execution? At FTMO, Blueberry Funded, Maven and E8 it does. Your risk management can breach the rule while you sleep.
- Is holding restricted, or only transacting? Almost everywhere it is only transacting. Funding Pips Zero is the exception that bans holding.
- What is the consequence? Account termination, soft breach with profit removed, a percentage haircut, or a flat cap. These are four different products and traders routinely treat them as one.
Verdict
“News trading is banned at prop firms” was accurate enough in 2024 and is wrong in 2026. But the replacement headline, “eight firms now allow it,” is only true if you read the scope alongside it. Five of those eight permissions are scoped to a phase or a product, and two of the three that are not are discretionary conduct rules rather than a line you can time to the second.
The honest framing is that the unit of analysis has dropped below the firm. Firm plus product plus phase is now the smallest question that has a correct answer, and every comparison table built on firm names alone, including the ones ranking above this article, is wrong by construction.
If you are choosing a firm rather than a strategy, the news policy is a poor first filter. Payout reliability and rule stability matter more, which is the argument we made in the 2024 to 2026 prop firm collapse analysis, and the exposure scoring in our regulated versus unregulated decision framework is the better place to start.
Every rule in this article was read on the firm’s own documentation between 1 and 2 September 2026, and each source is dated where the firm publishes a date. Prop firm rules change without notice. Confirm the current rule with your firm before you place the trade. JoinProp is not a financial adviser and none of this is advice.
Frequently asked questions
Can you trade news on a prop firm challenge?
At most firms, yes. FTMO, FundedNext, Alpha Capital, E8 Markets and Take Profit Trader all apply their news restrictions to funded accounts only, leaving the evaluation phase unrestricted. Funding Pips is a partial case: holding through news in evaluation is unrestricted on its standard models, but the firm separately prohibits deliberately trading a release in either phase. Blueberry Funded is the clear exception, applying its 2-minute rule to evaluation and earning accounts alike.
Which prop firm has no news trading restrictions at all?
Apex Trader Funding, Topstep and Goat Funded Trader impose no news-trading time window on any account. Topstep states directly that it does not require traders to flatten positions during economic releases. Apex allows news trading as part of a normal strategy but prohibits placing orders on both sides of a release. Goat Funded Trader allows it in every phase and caps the profit at 1% of initial balance rather than treating it as a breach.
Why do prop firms restrict news trading?
Most retail prop firms internalise trader flow rather than hedging it, so a funded trader’s profit is a direct cost to the firm. Finance Magnates set out the economics in December 2024. During releases, gaps make positions hard to hedge, spreads widen, and stop losses do not fill at their trigger price, so firms control the exposure through rules rather than through hedging.
What happens if you accidentally trade during news?
It depends entirely on the firm, and increasingly it is not account termination. Goat Funded Trader states explicitly that exceeding its news profit cap causes no breach or penalty. Alpha Capital and The5ers treat it as a soft breach that removes the profit. Funding Pips Zero closes the Master account. Check which of the four your firm operates before you need to know.
Does holding a position through news break the rules?
Usually not. Almost every firm restricts execution inside the window rather than holding through it, and FTMO, Funding Pips and The5ers all say so explicitly. Funding Pips Zero is the exception, prohibiting holding as well within 10 minutes either side of a high-impact release.
How many prop firms ban news trading in 2026?
Very few, on the only tracked dataset available. PropFirm Beacon’s sample of 34 firms, last verified 20 July 2026, records 68% as fully allowing news trading, 32% as limited or conditional, and 0% as not allowing it. That is a sample rather than a sector census, and most of the other numbers in circulation come from affiliate comparison sites that do not disclose which firms they checked.
