News-Trading Prop Firms in 2026: Which Firms Allow It and Which Restrict It

A FOMC rate decision can move MNQ 150 points in under a minute. A trader whose entire edge is built around that volatility needs to know, before paying a challenge fee, whether the firm they're buying into will let them trade it at all — because the answer varies dramatically by firm, and getting it wrong means buying a challenge that was never compatible with the strategy.

This article compares how major prop firms handle news trading in 2026 — fully permissive, restricted-on-funded-only, or banned outright — across both futures and forex/CFD firms, including the three confirmed on Tradzu's marketplace with published news policies.

Most prop firms allow news trading during evaluation but restrict it on funded accounts, typically through a short "flat" window — commonly 1 to 5 minutes — before and after Tier 1 events like FOMC, NFP, and CPI. A smaller group of firms, including Tradeify, TopStep, and Apex, impose no restriction at all on either stage. Only a handful of firms, such as TakeProfitTrader on its PRO accounts, ban news trading outright on funded accounts.

Quick Summary

• Evaluation accounts are almost universally permissive — nearly every firm surveyed allows news trading freely during the challenge phase, regardless of their funded-account policy

• The funded-account restriction is usually a short "flat" window, not a full-day ban — 1 to 5 minutes before and after the release is the most common structure

• Fully permissive firms on both stages: Tradeify, TopStep, Apex Standard, SabioTrade, Breakout, FundedNext Futures, City Traders Imperium

• E8 Markets, a confirmed Tradzu partner, allows unrestricted news trading in evaluation and applies a 5-minute flat window around Tier 1 events on funded E8 One and Signature accounts

• TakeProfitTrader is the clearest outright ban among major futures firms — PRO and PRO+ funded accounts must be flat a full minute before through a minute after specified events

• Violating a news-trading restriction typically results in voided profit, account suspension, or payout denial — rarely a warning first

Table of Contents

1. Why Firms Restrict News Trading at All

2. Fully Permissive Firms — No Restriction at Either Stage

3. Restricted-on-Funded Firms — The Most Common Model

4. E8 Markets' News Rule — The Tradzu Partner Detail

5. [Firms That Ban News Trading Outright](#banned]

6. Full Comparison Table

7. What Happens If You Break the Rule

8. Pros and Cons: Permissive vs Restricted Firms for News Traders

9. FAQ — People Also Ask

Why Firms Restrict News Trading at All

The restriction isn't about discouraging a specific strategy — it's about execution risk the firm can't fully control. Spreads on major pairs and indices can widen several times their normal width in the seconds around a release like NFP or FOMC, and slippage during that window can blow through a stop-loss before it fills. From the firm's side, that creates outsized, hard-to-price risk concentrated into a 60-second window, which is why the restriction is almost always framed as a short "flat" buffer rather than a blanket ban on the strategy.

Fully Permissive Firms — No Restriction at Either Stage

A meaningful group of firms, concentrated mostly in the futures space, impose no news-trading restriction at all, on evaluation or funded accounts:

• Tradeify — allowed on all accounts, no blackout windows, no restrictions

• TopStep — allowed without restriction, though extreme spread widening on NQ/ES during NFP or FOMC can still trigger a daily-loss breach even on a technically permitted trade

• Apex Trader Funding (Standard) — among the most permissive rule sets in the industry; news trading allowed, the only explicit restriction is on two-sided bracket orders around a release

• SabioTrade, Breakout, FundedNext Futures, City Traders Imperium, Fintokei, Trade The Pool — all allow news trading without a restriction window, per current public rule sheets

One caveat applies across every "permissive" firm on this list, including the ones above: being allowed to hold a position through a release doesn't protect you from the daily loss limit. A technically compliant trade can still breach drawdown in seconds if slippage is severe enough — the rule permits the trade, not the risk.

Restricted-on-Funded Firms — The Most Common Model

This is the standard pattern across most of the industry: evaluation accounts trade freely, funded accounts must go flat for a short window around specified events.

• E8 Markets — 5-minute window (both sides) on funded E8 One and Signature accounts; evaluation unrestricted (full detail below)

• TakeProfitTrader — unrestricted in the evaluation (TEST); PRO and PRO+ funded accounts must be flat 1 minute before through 1 minute after FOMC, NFP, CPI, and GDP

• My Funded Futures — allowed on most plans; the Pro plan specifically restricts Tier-1 events (FOMC, NFP, CPI) with a 2-minute flat window

• Lucid Trading — Daily account — flat within 1 minute of high-impact USD events on funded accounts; other Lucid account types (Flex, Pro, Direct) carry no news rule

• Top One Futures — Elite Daily and Elite Access — restricted around high-impact news on these specific programs; other Top One programs carry no window

• The5ers — more conservative than most, restricting news trading on the majority of its account types

• FTMO — widely reported as more permissive on funded accounts than most forex competitors, though some sources describe a short window on certain account types (reported as roughly 2 minutes). Given some inconsistency across public sources on FTMO's exact current policy, confirm the live rule for your specific account type directly on FTMO's site before trading a major release

• Funding Pips — general industry sourcing places Funding Pips among the forex firms that restrict news trading on funded accounts, though the exact window wasn't independently confirmed in this research; verify directly before relying on it

E8 Markets' News Rule — The Tradzu Partner Detail

Since E8 Markets is a confirmed Tradzu marketplace partner, its news rule is worth covering in full rather than summarizing.

On evaluation accounts — E8 One, Classic, Track, and Signature — news trading is completely unrestricted. FOMC, NFP, CPI, or any other release can be traded on any instrument, in any size, with no rule concern during the challenge phase.

On funded accounts, E8 prohibits new entries and exits within a 5-minute window before and after Tier 1 high-impact events — FOMC, NFP, and CPI specifically — and the restriction applies only to USD-correlated instruments affected by that specific release. Trading EUR/GBP or an unrelated commodity during a USD-driven NFP release isn't restricted by this rule, since the instrument isn't affected by the event.

The 5-minute window applies consistently across E8 One and E8 Signature funded accounts, covering Forex, Crypto, and Futures products. This is somewhat stricter than firms like Tradeify or TopStep that impose no window at all, so a trader whose core edge is specifically the FOMC or NFP print on a funded account should weigh this structural cost before choosing E8 over a fully permissive futures-only firm.

For the full picture of E8's other funded-account rules — including the 40%/35% consistency cap this restriction sits alongside — see what is the consistency rule and how does it interact with drawdown [INTERNAL LINK: consistency rule drawdown].

Firms That Ban News Trading Outright

Very few major firms impose a full ban rather than a short flat window, but it does exist:

• TakeProfitTrader (PRO/PRO+) — frequently cited as the clearest major exception, treating the restriction with enough severity that it functions close to a full ban around specified Tier-1 events on funded accounts, with breach treated as a contract violation

• My Funded Futures (Pro plan) — Tier-1 restriction enforced strictly enough that violation results in account closure and profit confiscation, not a soft warning

In both cases, the restriction is technically a short window rather than a 24-hour ban — but the enforcement severity (account closure, profit confiscation) makes it functionally closer to prohibition than the lighter "flat for 5 minutes" model most other restricted firms use.

Full Comparison Table

Rules verified as of June 2026 from firm help centers and independent trader-reported sources where noted. News-trading policies change more frequently than fee or profit-split structures — always confirm the current rule directly on the firm's own site before trading a major release, particularly for FTMO and Funding Pips where this research found some inconsistency across sources.

What Happens If You Break the Rule {#violation}

Outcomes vary by firm and contract tier, but typically fall into one of three categories: the profit from the offending trade is voided, the account is suspended pending review, or a pending payout is denied. Violations are generally logged even when the immediate consequence is minor, and repeated breaches can escalate to a permanent ban from the firm. None of the major firms surveyed treat a first news-trading violation as something resolved with a warning alone — the enforcement is typically immediate and financial.

Pros and Cons: Permissive vs Restricted Firms for News Traders

Choosing a fully permissive firm (Tradeify, TopStep, Apex Standard):

• ? No structural cost to a news-driven strategy — trade the release exactly as planned

• ? Simpler compliance — one less rule category to track during high-volatility weeks

• ? The daily loss limit still applies in full — permission to trade isn't protection from slippage

Choosing a restricted firm with a short window (E8 Markets, TakeProfitTrader on eval):

• ? Often paired with other advantages (platform choice, scaling caps, payout speed) worth the trade-off for traders whose edge isn't specifically the release itself

• ? The restriction typically only affects a few minutes per week, not the broader strategy

• ? A dedicated news-trading strategy loses access to its highest-probability setups on funded accounts specifically

The right choice depends entirely on whether your edge is built around trading the release itself, or whether news events are incidental to a broader strategy that can simply pause for five minutes without meaningful cost.

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Conclusion

News-trading rules are one of the more firm-specific details in prop trading, and they're almost always checkable before you pay. A fully permissive firm costs nothing extra for a news-driven strategy. A restricted firm with a short flat window costs little for most other strategies. The mismatch only bites when the two get paired incorrectly — a dedicated FOMC trader buying into a firm built around a five-minute blackout they never checked for.