Prohibited trading and abuse prevention
The complete list of strategies and behaviours prohibited at Propia: HFT, arbitrage, unmanaged grids, group hedging and account rolling.
This article lists only the strategies explicitly prohibited in Propia's official rules. A strategy that does not appear here is not necessarily prohibited.
Allowed
Using a martingale approach in your trading is permitted.
Prohibited
- High-frequency trading — leads to the account being closed
- Arbitrage strategies — lead to the account being closed
- Buying or selling account-management services
- Transferring an account or challenge to another person
- Using a third-party challenge-passing service
- Sharing account credentials with others
- Using a VPS — not permitted under any circumstances
Group hedging
Taking opposing buy and sell trades within one account or across several accounts — even under different ownership — in a close time window is prohibited. Any coordination between users to open opposing positions in order to reduce risk or circumvent the rules counts as group hedging.
Account rolling
This means buying or using several accounts to spread risk, deliberately sacrificing some of them, or trying to pass one or more accounts through high risk while other accounts absorb the cost of failure. It is prohibited.
Grids and averaging without risk management
This prohibition covers two forms:
- Repeatedly opening same-direction trades on one symbol while earlier trades on that symbol are in loss, without an independent stop loss on each — so that the exposure keeps growing as the market moves against the position.
- Opening a trade or basket in the opposite direction to lock in a floating loss instead of closing it (a “hedged grid”, or locking) — deferring the loss rather than realising it.
To establish this violation, indicator (a) must be present together with at least one of (b) to (e). No ordinary behaviour falls under this rule on its own.
| Indicator | Description |
|---|---|
| a | Four or more simultaneous open trades on one symbol in a grid structure |
| b | Back-to-back entries seconds apart, including several trades in one second, on one symbol |
| c | A win rate close to 100% in one market direction across 20 or more closed trades |
| d | Closing the whole accumulated series together at a single price point or very near one |
| e | Using opposite-direction trades as a substitute for a stop loss |
Scaling in with a stop loss, holding several trades at once, and using the platform's own bulk-close feature — none of these fall under this rule on their own.
Where the rule applies
| Product | Phase one | Phase two | Phase three | Funded account |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Master | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Phoenix | ✓ | ✓ | — | ✓ |
| Triple | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
On every Propia account, in every phase and on the funded account.
Consequences
Grid and averaging patterns are reviewed under the risk flag system and can lead to trade results being rejected, profit produced by the pattern being removed, and — if repeated — to the account being closed. Where violations span several accounts, Propia may suspend the accounts, reject a payout, remove eligibility, or escalate the case for further review.
Frequently asked questions
Is scaling in prohibited?
No. Scaling in with an independent stop loss on each trade is ordinary behaviour and does not fall under the grid rule. What is prohibited is accumulating trades without a stop loss in order to defer a loss.
Will a shared IP fail my account?
Not on its own. A shared IP is only a risk indicator, not proof of a violation. But combined with similar trading behaviour, the accounts are reviewed as linked accounts.
Related articles
The conditions for using a trading robot, the mandatory EA registration process, the difference between a risk-management EA and a trading robot, and the copy-trading rules.
Ordinary trading during news is allowed, but hedging is prohibited from 30 minutes before to 30 minutes after a red event.
Propia's staged framework for reviewing high-risk behaviour: yellow versus red flags, what triggers them, and how they are cleared.
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