More funded accounts die on the first Friday of the month than on any random Tuesday. Not because non-farm payrolls are hard to trade — because most traders never checked whether their prop firm lets them trade the news at all. The rule is buried in the funded-account terms, it usually differs from the evaluation rules they passed under, and they find out at the worst possible moment: mid-spike, with a position the firm is about to auto-close.
Here is what a news restriction actually is, why nearly every firm has one on funded accounts, and — read from each firm's own rulebook — exactly who allows it and who does not.
What "no news trading" really means
Almost no firm bans news trading outright. What they impose is a window: you cannot open or close a position within a set time of a named high-impact event — the releases on the economic calendar marked red, like NFP, CPI, and FOMC. The window is short and specific. FTMO uses two minutes before and after; FundedNext uses sixty seconds. Step outside the window and you trade freely; hold a position through the window and you risk a soft breach even on a winning trade.
Two details catch people out. First, the restriction almost always applies to funded accounts only — the evaluation phase is usually unrestricted, so a trader passes trading news happily, then inherits a rule they never met. Second, "restricted" is not "prohibited": the penalty is usually a voided trade or a warning, not an instant blow-up — but repeat it and some firms escalate. Read your firm's exact window and penalty before your first payout, not after.
Why firms restrict it
A prop firm hedges its funded traders' flow on its own books. Around a red-folder release, spreads blow out and fills slip — a trader who scalps the spike can bank a number the firm cannot cleanly replicate on its side. The window is risk management, not spite. It is also why futures firms tend to be the permissive ones: on a regulated futures exchange the firm's hedging problem is smaller, so several drop the restriction entirely.
Who allows news trading on funded accounts — verified from each firm's rules
We read every firm's published news policy and classify the funded-account behavior. The live version travels with each firm's scorecard; here is where the tvsm-verified firms stand at our latest verification.
Allowed — no funded-account news restriction
Phidias Funding, The5ers, Apex Trader Funding, Topstep. These are the firms you can hold through a release without a window — note how many are futures firms.
Permitted with conditions
Audacity Capital — news trading is allowed but governed by extra parameters or a more permissive program tier; read the specific terms.
Restricted on funded accounts (windowed around major events)
FTMO, Funding Pips, The Trading Pit, Hola Prime, Earn2Trade, Blue Guardian, MyFundedFutures, OneUp Trader, Tradeify, TradeDay, Lux Trading Firm, Funded Trading Plus, Lucid Trading, Alpha Futures, Alpha Capital Group, E8 Funding, FXIFY, FundedNext, Maven Trading, Goat Funded Trader, City Traders Imperium, Take Profit Trader, The Funded Trader. Each imposes a defined no-trade window around named high-impact events on the funded account. The evaluation phase is unrestricted at most of them — which is exactly why the rule surprises people after they pass. Open the firm's scorecard for its specific window (some are 60 seconds, some two minutes, some longer).
How to use this
If your edge lives on the calendar — if you trade CPI, FOMC, or NFP on purpose — treat the news policy as a hard filter, not a footnote: an allowed-list firm (most of them futures) is the only honest fit, and buying a windowed-restriction account is buying a rule that fights your strategy. If news is incidental to how you trade, the practical move is simpler: know your firm's window, and flatten before it opens. Either way, pair this with the drawdown model and the payout cap — the three rules that quietly decide funded accounts — and check them on a firm's full scorecard before you fund, using the homepage firm table to compare.