Prop Firms That Allow News Trading: CPI and FOMC Rules
Prop firms that allow news trading are rarer than their marketing implies, because the minutes around CPI, FOMC and NFP are where cheap accounts make expensive moves — and where firms' risk desks earn their keep. Some firms ban holding through high-impact releases outright, some "allow" it while reserving the right to void fills on slippage, and a few genuinely don't care. If economic releases are your actual edge, the difference decides where you can trade at all.
The three flavors of news rules
Rulebooks cluster into three patterns, and the label on the marketing page rarely matches the contract:
- Hard ban: no positions within a window (often ±2 minutes) around listed high-impact events. Violations can void eval passes or payouts — the firm's calendar, not yours, defines the events.
- Soft ban: trading is technically allowed, but the firm reserves the right to cancel profits from "abnormal execution" or slippage-heavy fills around releases. This is the dangerous one — you learn the rule existed when your best trade is clawed back.
- Unrestricted: the firm treats news like any other minute. Usually paired with live-broker execution, where your slippage is real and the firm has no simulated fills to dispute.
Always search the funded-account agreement for "news," "economic," and "slippage" — a two-minute read that protects four-figure payouts.
Firms our research rates for news traders
From the current 16-firm research, these recommended firms are rated a genuine fit for news trading — no hard ban, and no history of clawing back release-window profits:
| Firm | Score | Drawdown | Consistency | Payouts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Phidias Propfirm | 7.0 | mixed | None during evaluation. Funded CASH stage: the 30% rule — no single day may exceed 30% of accumulated profit — applies to Fundamental and Premium CASH accounts only. Express to Live (including 25K Static) has no consistency rule at any stage. | CASH accounts: the payout cadence is set by plan type, not by payout number. Fundamental requires 10 trading days BETWEEN payouts; Premium requires 5. A day counts only with positive PnL of at least $150 on 50K, $200 on 100K or $250 on 150K. Min $500. The per-period withdrawal cap is $2,000/$2,500/$2,750 by size on BOTH Fundamental and Premium; Premium's progressive 75% to 100% split is applied to that same cap rather than being a separate lower one. E2L has zero minimum trading days and its first payout converts the account to a LIVE Dorman account, which pays daily with no per-cycle or lifetime cap. The route to Live is now 5 payouts OR $100,000 cumulative (the old 3 payouts / $75,000 rule is deprecated), and E2L payouts do not count toward that review. |
| Elite Trader Funding | 5.0 | mixed | No consistency rule in the 1-Step, EOD, Diamond Hands or Static evaluations. Fast Track eval: best profitable day may not exceed 40% of total profit, and a separate 30% consistency requirement on overall profit applies at payout. The ATD rule bites on the funded side of every other plan: a day counts only at $200+ realized profit ($100+ on 10K 1-Step, 25K 1-Step, 25K EOD and 100K Static) AND at least 23% of your best ATD, with DTF using its own per-size thresholds. Setting a new best day permanently raises the bar and the best-day figure does not reset after a payout. | Cycle-based: 8 Active Trade Days for payout cycle 1, 10 ATDs for cycles 2-4. Per-cycle caps scale with size (a 50K runs $100-$1,250 in cycle 1, growing toward $2,000 later; Static cycle 1 maxes at $2,000). Minimum withdrawal is $100 on the general Elite table, $250 on every row of the current 1-Step table, $1,000 on 25K and 50K DTF and $500 on 10K and 100K DTF. To advance a payout cycle you must withdraw the full cycle maximum. Sim requests approved daily. $25,000 lifetime sim payout cap per trader, then forced transition to LIVE ELITE (80/20, daily withdrawals on business days, $250 min, 48h approval guarantee, uncapped). If a LIVE ELITE account is liquidated at the live broker, a trader may, subject to approval, return to sim and stay eligible for up to $150,000 of lifetime sim payouts, released in $25,000 increments. DTF caps at $25,000 PER TRADER across all DTF accounts combined, not per account, after which trading stops, the account is revoked and the trader moves to LIVE ELITE. DTF ATDs per cycle are 5 (10K), 10 (25K), 15 (50K) and 20 (100K), and each DTF size carries its own best-day percentage: 50%, 38%, 62% and 50%. |
Staying compliant even where it's allowed
Unrestricted doesn't mean unwatched. Firms still monitor for patterns they consider abuse: straddling a release with resting orders on simulated fills, latency arbitrage, or coordinated identical trades across accounts. Trading a release with a directional thesis and live risk is fine at the firms above; engineering free-option fills out of simulation quirks is what gets accounts flagged — everywhere. When in doubt, trade the reaction, not the initial print.
Where this fits in your shortlist
News permission is a niche filter — apply it after the structural ones. The order that works: drawdown type first (see prop firms with EOD drawdown), consistency rules second, news rules third. Or answer "news trader" in the matching quiz and it weights all three at once.
Quick answers
Can I hold a position through FOMC at a prop firm?
Only at firms with no hard event window — and even then, check whether the funded account (not just the eval) allows it. Several firms relax or tighten rules between the two stages.
Why do prop firms ban news trading at all?
Release-second fills in a simulated environment can be unrealistically good — real markets gap and slip. Firms either ban the window, claw back 'abnormal' fills, or run live execution where slippage polices itself.
What events count as high-impact news?
Typically CPI, FOMC rate decisions and minutes, NFP, PPI, GDP advance, and central-bank pressers. Firms with event windows publish their own calendar — that list, not your economic calendar, is the binding one.
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