Prohibited activity across all ONYX products: what breaches or terminates an account. Rules apply firm-wide to both the standard tracks (Sapphire/Ruby, Flex/Flex Funded, Gold/Platinum) and to Express to Live (Ruby-X, Platinum-X) unless a row is scoped otherwise.
Severity
Permanent ban | Account terminated and you are barred from ONYX. Applies to: hedging in any form; chargeback without contacting support first. |
Immediate termination | Applies to: trading prohibited instruments. |
Prohibited (breach) | The activity is banned and breaches, fails, suspends, or terminates the account. Applies to: contract-limit breach, holding through news, latency/feed exploits, system/pricing-error exploits, bots/automation, all-or-nothing sizing, overnight/weekend holds, account/credential sharing, inactivity. |
There are no warnings and no appeals on clear violations.
Trading violations
Exceeding contract limits | Holding more contracts than your account allows at any moment. The limit is pooled (micros and standards share one limit) and 10 micros count as 1 standard contract. The limit differs by family: Standard is set by account balance size (25K 3 standard / 30 micro, 50K 5/50, 100K 8/80, 150K 10/100, Gold 200K 12/120). Express to Live is set by drawdown size (mini/micro: $1,000 1/10, $1,500 1/15, $2,000 2/20, $3,000 3/30). See Allowed Instruments. |
Trading prohibited instruments | Immediate termination. Prohibited on every account: stocks, options, spot forex, crypto, CFDs, or any non-futures instrument. Allowed: futures on CME, COMEX, NYMEX, and CBOT plus their micros (ES, NQ, CL, GC, etc.). See Allowed Instruments. |
Holding through news | Failing to be flat at least 2 minutes before a scheduled tier-1 economic release (FOMC, NFP, CPI, PPI, FOMC minutes). Re-enter only after prices settle. Firm-wide, all phases. See News Trading Rule. |
Latency arbitrage and feed exploits | Prohibited firm-wide. Latency arbitrage, quote stuffing, exploiting price-feed delays, or any strategy that uses system latency to generate artificial profits. |
Exploiting system or pricing errors | Prohibited firm-wide. Taking advantage of platform bugs, pricing errors, or technical issues to generate artificial profits. |
Automated or bot trading | Prohibited firm-wide. Manual trading only. Bots, algos, and any form of automated trade execution are banned on all ONYX accounts. All trades must be placed manually by the account owner. |
All-or-nothing sizing | Placing your full maximum contract allocation into a single trade with no risk-management structure. |
Hedging in any form | Permanent ban. Holding opposing positions to offset risk, whether in a single account or across multiple accounts, and whether in the same instrument or in correlated instruments. This is distinct from copy trading (same-direction mirroring), which is permitted, see below. |
Overnight and weekend holds | No overnight or weekend holds on any ONYX account, in any phase. Any position still open at session close is automatically liquidated at close. |
Account violations
Account or credential sharing | Prohibited firm-wide. Allowing another person to trade your account, or sharing your login credentials with anyone. |
Chargeback without contacting support | Permanent ban. Opening a payment dispute with your bank or PayPal without first emailing [email protected]. Contact support before any billing dispute. See Billing & Payments. |
Evaluation inactivity (Standard) | 14 days with no trading on a standard evaluation (Sapphire, Flex, Gold) breaches the account. A trading day requires at least 1 trade. |
Funded inactivity (Standard) | Failing to place at least 1 trade per calendar week (Sunday to Friday) on a standard funded account (Ruby, Flex Funded, Platinum). The account is suspended after 2 consecutive inactive weeks. |
Copy trading is permitted
Copy trading across your OWN ONYX accounts is permitted on any platform, firm-wide. Copy trading means mirroring the same positions in the same direction across your own accounts.
Holding opposing positions to offset risk (hedging) is a different activity and is prohibited (permanent ban), as listed above. Copying another person's account, or sharing credentials so someone else trades for you, is also prohibited.
Do not conflate: Standard vs Express to Live
These rules in this article are firm-wide (identical for both families): prohibited instruments, news holds, latency/feed exploits, system/pricing-error exploits, bots/automation, all-or-nothing sizing, hedging, overnight/weekend holds, account/credential sharing, chargebacks, and copy trading. The rules that DIFFER by family are:
Dimension | Standard tracks | Express to Live |
Contract limit is set by | Account balance size (25K to 200K) | Drawdown / risk size ($1,000 to $3,000) |
Contract limits | 25K 3/30, 50K 5/50, 100K 8/80, 150K 10/100, 200K 12/120 (standard/micro) | $1,000 1/10, $1,500 1/15, $2,000 2/20, $3,000 3/30 (mini/micro) |
Forced daily loss limit | None on any standard account (optional personal DLL only) | Evaluation and buffer: 40% of drawdown ($400/$600/$800/$1,200). Live: self-set only. |
Evaluation inactivity breach | 14 days with no trading | See Express to Live (min 7 trading days in evaluation; buffer has no minimum days) |
Funded/live environment | Funded accounts (Ruby, Flex Funded, Platinum) are SIMULATED | The Express LIVE account is REAL live-capital; its evaluation and buffer are simulated |
Max accounts | Up to 10, or up to 5 on the Gold track | Up to 6 active, capped by combined drawdown of $6,000 |
Express to Live is available now and is a separate program from the standard tracks' coming-soon live stage (Diamond). Full Express rules: Express to Live (Ruby-X and Platinum-X).
If you are unsure
If you have a question about whether a specific strategy is permitted, contact [email protected] before trading it. Replies arrive within one business day.