News trading is the most common reason a profitable account loses its payout, and the least consistently defined rule in the industry. Two firms with identical marketing can have opposite policies, and the restriction often applies to one instrument class while being advertised as a general ban.
The three shapes of a news rule
| Rule shape | What it says | Practical effect |
|---|---|---|
| No news trading at all | Positions must be closed before the event and not reopened until a set window after | You sit out NFP, CPI and rate decisions completely |
| Restricted window | No opening or closing positions within X minutes of the event | You can hold through if opened earlier on some accounts, not others |
| Restricted instruments | Rule applies to indices or metals but not FX, or vice versa | Requires reading the instrument list, not the headline |
The third shape catches traders most often. A firm that permits news trading in general may specifically prohibit it on US indices, or ban holding gold through high-impact releases, because the gap risk is concentrated there. The sales page says “news trading allowed”; the agreement has an instrument annex.
Why firms restrict news at all
A prop firm’s exposure is not the same as a broker’s. The firm is effectively underwriting your risk through a simulated account and paying from a shared profit pool. High-impact releases produce gap risk that no stop-loss can guarantee against: price can jump straight through your level, and a 0.5% planned risk becomes a 4% realised loss in one tick.
On a $200,000 account, one NFP gap on oversized gold exposure can wipe the firm’s revenue from a hundred other traders. Restricting news is a solvency measure, not paternalism. It also happens to protect you: the same gap that voids a payout can void an account.
The events that matter
- US Non-Farm Payrolls, first Friday of the month
- US CPI and Core CPI
- FOMC rate decisions and the press conference after them
- ECB, BoE and BoJ rate decisions
- US GDP advance estimate and PPI
- Election results and surprise central bank interventions
The window is the part traders get wrong. A “no trading five minutes before to five minutes after” rule is easy. A “no positions held through the release” rule often means you must be flat from 15 minutes before until 15 minutes after, and closing at −14:59 with a pending close that fills at 13:59 after a spike can register as trading during the window.
How to stay compliant without giving up the month
The realistic approach is a news calendar rule, applied mechanically:
- Log every high-impact event for your instruments at the start of each week.
- Flat the account 20 minutes before any event on your instrument, and stay flat until the firm’s window plus a buffer has passed.
- If you want the trade, take it as a second-leg entry after the first spike settles. Many firms only restrict the window, so 20 minutes after the release is legal and the edge is often better.
- Never add to a losing position before a release hoping to recover. That is the single most common breach pattern, and it usually fails twice: rule and money.
- Keep the trade log with server timestamps. If there is a dispute, being able to show a flat book at 13:25 is the whole argument.
News, EAs and slippage
If you run automation, the news rule is your bot’s problem. EAs will happily open a position at 13:30 because the strategy sees a breakout. Hard-code a blackout window into the EA, and check that the window is in server time, not your local time. A bot that ignores the news calendar will eventually cost more than the strategy earns, and it will do it on the one day you cannot argue about.
Slippage modelling matters too. A backtest that fills at the exact stop price during NFP is fantasy. Model the release bars as gaps of at least your instrument’s historical worst fill, or exclude them, then decide whether the strategy still has an edge. If the edge only exists in the news window, that firm is the wrong venue for it.
When news trading is genuinely allowed
Some firms explicitly permit it and even advertise it, usually on accounts where the maximum exposure is lower or the drawdown is tighter. Read the trade-off: a firm that allows news trading has almost always tightened something else, because the risk has to land somewhere. Check the maximum lot size, the daily drawdown and the leverage cap before assuming you found a loophole.
For most traders, the honest calculation is that restricted news days cost a handful of sessions per month. The position size calculator and the risk of ruin calculator both show the same thing from different angles: the edge comes from many small, boring trades, not from the four minutes around a payrolls print.
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Written by Justice Manyika — trading systems builder, Johannesburg. Educational content only, not financial advice. See our disclaimer.
The firm whose rules these calculators are built around
Blueberry Funded’s drawdown type, daily loss limit and consistency wording are the reference numbers on this site. I read their rules line by line and wrote up every catch, including the parts I do not like, in the full review.
Check Blueberry Funded’s current terms or read the full review first
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