We do not limit your trading style or strategy, you are welcome to employ almost any strategy at GFN.
However, it must be noted that any form of cheating and/or abuse of the simulated environment is strictly prohibited and goes directly against the GFN Terms & Conditions that all traders agree to when signing up for our services. We strongly encourage all GFN Customers to read this article and GFN’s Terms & Conditions policy in their entirety to avoid unintended repercussions.
At GFN, our primary goal is to empower traders to employ viable trading styles that can be applied effectively in live market scenarios. Therefore, trading styles that do not reflect real market trading are not allowed and will result in a breach of our Terms of Service without any warning.
Exploiting Evaluation Accounts Is Prohibited
Utilizing strategies that exploit Evaluation accounts will lead to the termination of a GFN Trader's account, whether in the challenge phase or while in the GFN simulated Funded stage.
Any "Account Management", "Pass Your Challenge", "Copy Trading Services," or "Signal Services" are also strictly prohibited, resulting in the rejection of any Simulated Funded Accounts, as well as a permanent ban of all GFN services.
Further, any trading styles that are deemed as "cheating", or otherwise not reflective of trading in the real market, are not permitted and will result in a violation of our Terms of Use. For this reason, it is against our rules to take advantage of strategies that generate risk-free, consistent simulated profits only on demo accounts.
Here are some further specific example Strategies That Violate our Terms of Service:
High-Frequency Trading (HFT)
Usage of HFT bot(s), HFT Expert advisors (EA), and HFT algorithms are strictly prohibited on our platforms and should not be used under any circumstances.
High-Frequency Trading (HFT) refers to the use of advanced computer algorithms and high-speed telecommunications networks to execute large numbers of trades in fractions of a second.
HFT is prohibited as it can lead to market manipulation, unfair advantages, and can cause instability in the market. Any trader found to be engaging in HFT will breach the GFN Terms & Conditions and lose the ability to trade on our platform.
Latency Arbitrage is prohibited. Latency arbitrage is a trading strategy that takes advantage of the time delay between the execution of a trade and the receipt of market data.
Grid (Reverse) Trading
Grid trading is a trading strategy that involves placing inverse buy and sell orders of the same instrument for the exact or similar risk. This strategy can lead to market manipulation, over-leveraging, market instability, and a potential risk-free simulated profit.
As members of the GFN community, it is crucial to have a well-defined risk management strategy in place to avoid large simulated Drawdowns and over-leveraging. Therefore, the use of grid trading is a prohibited trading strategy.
Account Sharing or Account Sale
Traders are restricted from the sharing of accounts or the re-sale of Simulated Funded Accounts from one owner to another for any reason.
Account sharing and the selling of accounts are strictly prohibited and will result in the immediate breach of your account(s) and being banned from our services as this behavior goes against GFN's Terms & Conditions.
Martingale Trading
The Martingale trading strategy is a method of investing in which the size of the investment is increased after each simulated loss, with the expectation that a winning trade will recoup all previous simulated losses and produce a simulated profit. This strategy is considered gambling and is extremely risky as it can lead to large simulated Drawdowns and the simulated loss of all simulated capital if a trader experiences a prolonged series of simulated losses.
In theory, this strategy will always work, but in practice, it is only possible to make this strategy work with unlimited simulated capital. Firms provide a pre-determined level of maximum simulated Drawdown and all traders should formulate their strategy around this predefined level of maximum risk.
It is crucial to have a well-defined risk management strategy in place and to avoid betting an entire account on a single trade. Therefore, this trading activity goes against GFN’s Terms & Conditions.
Hedging or Group Hedging Across Multiple Accounts
Hedging or group hedging across multiple accounts, on the other hand, refers to a trading strategy where an individual or group of individuals open multiple accounts with a financial institution and place trades in opposite directions (i.e., buy/sell), on the same asset, across all accounts.
This can be done in an attempt to simulated profit from the price movements of an asset without having to take on significant market risk.
This type of trading behavior is also known as "Arbitrage" and "Grid Trading" and is not permitted at GFN. In the real market, this would result in $0 simulated profit as you are hedged in both directions.
However, while trading with a Firm, you would be losing the firm money on one account and generating a simulated profit on the other, resulting in risk-free simulated profits, which are violations of compliance with the functioning of the real financial market.
Collusion Between Users
Collusion between users refers to a trading strategy where an individual or group of individuals open multiple accounts with a financial institution and place trades in the same direction (i.e., buy/sell), on the same asset, across all accounts. Collusion between users is also known as "layering" or "spoofing" and is considered a form of market manipulation.
This type of trading behavior is strongly prohibited and will result in the breaching of all accounts and the banning of the trader.
Summary
These are the most common strategies that we have seen people use to take advantage of demo accounts, though this list does not represent all possible strategies that would go against our trading rules. If any account is seen to be using unfair strategies or an unrealistic trading style, they will not be eligible to be funded, and Simulated Funded Accounts may be breached. Keep in mind that all trading on our platform must be in agreement with the real operations of the financial market. Our statistical assessments and reviews continue to be refined as more data is obtained, such that a situation that hypothetically might not have been identified as problematic once, could be flagged in the future.
If a strategy is found not to be replicable in the real market, we reserve the right to investigate this strategy and terminate your access to our services.