FTMO rules explained

The drawdown mechanic — read this twice

FTMO uses a static drawdown. The maximum-loss level is fixed from the starting balance and does not move as you make money. This is the trader-friendly model: your buffer is knowable on day one and a profitable run genuinely increases the distance to your stop-out.

Whatever the model, size your risk against the buffer rather than the account size. The practical rule we use: never let a single campaign risk more than a third of the distance between current equity and the breach level.

Consistency and payout-eligibility rules

Consistency rules are where traders lose money they have already made. On FTMO the stated position is: None on the evaluation. That leaves the payout gate mostly to the drawdown and minimum-days requirements.

The mechanic to watch is the single-best-day percentage. Where a firm caps one day at a share of total profit, a single outsized win can push a payout out by weeks because you must grind additional smaller days to bring the ratio back inside the cap. If you scalp news or trade one high-conviction setup a week, that mechanic will hurt you far more than a slightly lower profit split.

Full rule matrix

Each flag below is read off FTMO's public rulebook and paired with the actual mechanic, because "allowed" means very different things from firm to firm.

• News trading: conditionally allowed — Allowed on the evaluation. On funded accounts the restriction applies to the two minutes either side of high-impact releases for swing-restricted account types.
• Expert advisors / algos: allowed — EAs are permitted, including on funded accounts. Tick-scalping, latency and copy-arbitrage EAs are the ones that get flagged.
• Weekend holding: conditionally allowed — Standard accounts must be flat before the weekend; the Swing add-on removes that and the news restriction together.
• Overnight holding: allowed — Overnight holding is standard on all account types, no extra fee.
• Copy trading: conditionally allowed — Copying between your own FTMO accounts is fine. Copying a third-party signal that many other FTMO traders also run triggers the duplicate-trading rule.
• No time limit: allowed — No calendar deadline on either phase since the 2023 rule overhaul.
• Crypto pairs: allowed — Majors and a broad alt list, tradable 24/7 including weekends.
• No consistency rule: allowed — No consistency rule on the evaluation, and none applied retroactively to payouts.

Rules that end accounts in practice

Beyond the headline limits, these are the clauses FTMO actually enforces.

• Static maximum loss: Your drawdown is measured from the initial balance and does not trail your equity high. Once you are up 8% on a 10% buffer, that entire cushion stays yours — the opposite of the trailing models used across futures.
• 5% daily loss limit: Calculated on the higher of balance or equity at the daily reset, and it includes floating losses on open positions. Most FTMO failures are daily-limit breaches from holding a loser through a news print, not blown maximum drawdown.
• News and weekend rules: The standard FTMO Challenge allows news trading and weekend holding; the Swing account exists specifically to remove restrictions on both. Check which product you bought before an NFP release.

Rule stability

FTMO appears 2 times in our rule-change register. At least one of those changes was applied retroactively to open accounts — the strongest single warning signal we track. A rulebook that moves is a rulebook you have to re-read before every payout cycle.

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