Help CenterWe look for skilled, independent traders who bring their own ideas and strategies to the table. We support and reward genuine trading talent.
However, to maintain a fair and professional platform, we have rules against exploitative trading practices.
Violating these rules will result in one or more of the following, depending on the severity of the breach.
❌ Immediate termination of your funded account & no refund.
❌ Permanent ban from CTI.
⚠️ The Following Are NOT Allowed
🔷 Reckless Behaviour
Account Stacking / Churning of Accounts: Account stacking is when a trader repeatedly trades with high risk and breaches the Maximum Loss Limit on one account, then opens or uses another account to repeat the same high-risk strategy.
This includes any attempt to use multiple accounts as a way to gamble for a quick profit by sacrificing some accounts and hoping one will succeed.
At CTI, this behaviour is considered abuse of the funding program. It goes against our values of responsible trading and risk management.
If a trader is found to have breached multiple accounts in a short period using the same high-risk approach without adjusting their strategy, this will be treated as account stacking.
🧑⚖️ Verdict:
If two or more accounts are breached within a rolling 7-day trading period due to risking 2.5% or more per trade idea or without any meaningful drawdown recovery attempt, and the trades show no consistent strategy or risk control, this will be flagged as account stacking.
One-Sided Bets: One-sided bets happen when a trader only places trades in one direction (either buy or sell) without proper analysis or considering market conditions.
This kind of trading ignores risk management and can cause big losses.
Additionally, leaving trades open without actively managing them, hoping they will reach the profit target, is not permitted. If you place a trade and walk away without adjusting it based on the market, this is not considered responsible trading.
We expect traders to manage their trades actively, even long-term swing trades. You must show that you are reviewing your trades, making adjustments, and using logic behind your trades.
🧑⚖️Verdict
If a trader consistently opens trades in only one direction (100% buy or sell) without variation or clear market logic, and/or allows trades to run to TP without active management or updates, this will be flagged as a one-sided bet strategy.
Reckless Trading Behaviour: We do not allow traders to "gamble" their way to passing a challenge or evaluation. This means you cannot try to pass by risking everything on one or two trades.
Trading is considered reckless when a trader:
- Uses extremely high risk on one trade idea.
- Risk the entire drawdown limit in one go, or
- Maxes out Leverage on a single trade idea.
This kind of trading is based on luck, not skill or consistent strategy, and does not show proper risk management.
Verdict 🧑⚖️
If a trader risks on any trade idea 2.5% or more of the initial account balance, this will be flagged as "Reckless trading", because risking more would put your account in danger of blowing up your challenge or funded account.
*A Trade idea is 1 position or more that are active at the same time on one symbol.
🔷 Cheating Your Way In
Unauthorised Copy Trading / Group Trading: Using any signal services or social trading platforms to mirror the trades of another trader is not allowed.
This includes:
- Manually copying trades from a signal provider.
- Using Expert Advisors (EAs) or software to copy someone else's trades.
- Following Telegram, Discord, or other copy-paste trade alerts.
- Group Trading or Coordinating trades with other traders, whether manually or using an EA
These methods rely on someone else’s skill, not your own, and they go against the purpose of our funding programs, which is to evaluate YOUR trading performance.
Click Here to check Authorised Copy Trading activities.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If our risk team identifies that trades on a CTI account are highly identical to those from another trader — in terms of timing, position size, strategy — or if most of the profits come from a small number of trades that appear to be copied from another account, this will be treated as unauthorized copy trading.
Additionally, if the trading activity on a CTI account shows consistent patterns or behaviour that are highly identical to the trades of another trader (whether from within CTI or outside), it will also be considered a violation of our copy trading policy.
Funded Account Pass Services: Only the account holder is allowed to trade the account.
You must not use any Funded Account Pass Services or allow any third party to trade on your behalf under any circumstances.
This includes:
- Hiring someone to trade for you.
- Letting a friend or mentor place trades on your account.
- Using a company or EA service that promises to pass funding challenges or trade your funded account.
Our programs are built to assess YOUR trading skills — not someone else's. Letting another person control your account breaks this principle.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect an account being traded by anyone other than the registered account holder, or if trading patterns match known pass services or other accounts, this will be treated as unauthorised account management.
We may ask you for more info to prove you're the one trading. If you cannot prove that you are trading the account, it will be terminated.
Account Sharing or Reselling: You are not allowed to: Give or sell your account access to another person, or split profits with someone who is managing your account.
These actions break our rules because the account was approved based on your skills, not someone else’s. Letting another person use your account hides the real trader behind the trades.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect that your account is accessed by someone else, has unusual IP/device activity, or shows trading patterns that match other accounts, we will treat it as unauthorised account sharing or resale. We may request verification to confirm that you are trading.
Group Hedging: When two or more traders work together to take opposite positions on the same symbol using different accounts — either at CTI or across other prop firms — to cancel out risk and guarantee a win for one side.
This is not allowed because it manipulates the system and hides real trading ability.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect that accounts regularly place opposing trades on the same symbol at the same time, showing signs of coordinated risk sharing, or belong to a community using reverse strategies across accounts, we will treat this as group hedging.
Hedging: Using one or more accounts to place opposite trades on the same symbol (or highly correlated symbols) at the same time, either manually or using an EA (Expert Advisor).
For example, one account takes a long position on EUR/USD, while another account takes a short position on the same pair or a highly correlated pair, such as GBPUSD.
This tactic guarantees a win on at least one account, regardless of market direction. It’s a form of risk-free hedging that manipulates trading outcomes and breaks the program's fairness.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect that one or more accounts regularly place opposite trades on the same asset, or you're using an EA to mirror and reverse trades across accounts, we will treat this as Hedging.
🔷 Certain Trading Strategies
Using EAs 3rd-Party EAs (Except for the 1-Step Challenge is Allowed): You cannot use any 3rd-party Expert Advisor (EA) unless you own the source code to prove it's yours.
Without the source code, we cannot verify what the EA does. This creates a risk of hidden strategies or system manipulation, which violates our rules around transparency and fair trading.
Note: Using trade managers and calculators is allowed. ✅
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we see you're using an EA, you must submit the EA’s source code to CTI.
P.S.: We're happy to sign an NDA so that we can use the EA solely for conducting our due diligence, in compliance with our obligations.
❌ If you cannot provide the EA source code, the EA is not allowed, as it indicates you do not own the EA and it's a 3rd-party.
⚠️ This applies to all programs, except the 1-Step Challenge, where any EA is allowed.
Bracketing Strategies: Bracketing is a trading method where traders place both Buy-Stop and Sell-Stop orders above and below the market price.
The goal of the Bracketing Strategy is to catch the price spike in either direction as news creates volatility, triggering one of the trades while the other is usually cancelled or quickly closed. This is not allowed on CTI accounts.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If you place opposing pending orders (buy stop/limit and sell stop/limit) around the current price, it will be treated as Bracketing.
This applies to manual trades and EAs.
Martingale Style Trading (Except in 1-Step Challenge): is a high-risk strategy where the trader opens multiple positions as the market moves against the original trade and closes all positions when the price returns to the 1st trade entry.
This practice is strictly prohibited across all CTI accounts, except in the 1-Step Challenge. This rule applies to manual trading and Expert Advisors (EAs) that employ Martingale-style logic.
A trade is considered Martingale if:
- A trader opens a trade. As the price moves against the original trade idea, they continue to add more positions to their losing positions (usually at the same or higher volume).
- All the trades are then closed together when the price returns near the first entry.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
⚠️ To leave a margin of error, if we detect that more than 10% of your total profit was generated using Martingale-style trading, your account will violate this rule.
✅ What Is Allowed: Layering
Layering (or scaling into a losing position) is allowed and differs from Martingale trading:
- The trader has a clear directional bias and strategy.
- Trades are closed at a defined profit or loss, not simply when the price returns to near the first entry price.
Grid Trading: Grid trading is a strategy where traders place multiple buy and sell orders at set price levels above and below the current market price, creating a “grid” of trades.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect a trader doing the following, we treat it as Grid Trading.
- As the market moves up or down, the orders in the grid are triggered.
- The idea is that winning trades on one side (buy or sell) will cover losing trades on the other side.
This works best when the market is moving within a range (sideways). But if the market trends strongly in one direction, the trades on the wrong side of the grid can build up large losses.
This rule applies to both manual strategies and EAs.
🔷 Systems that Exploit Price Feed Inefficiencies
EAs That Scalp During Rollover to Exploit Price Feed: typically around 00:00 server time to take advantage of unstable price feeds or widened spreads is strictly prohibited.
These EAs open and close trades in seconds during the nightly rollover session (when spreads widen and liquidity is thin). The goal is to profit from temporary price feed errors or delays.
These actions are not based on market skill but are instead attempts to exploit platform behaviour.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
No EAs are allowed to open or close trades during the rollover period to scalp or exploit pricing glitches.
Gaps or News Scalping EAs: These bots open trades right before or during major news events or significant price gaps.
They try to profit from the fast price movements that happen immediately after the news. But this kind of trading is very risky and based on unpredictable spikes, not real skill.
These types of trades cannot be replicated by our liquidity provider as they take advantage of low liquidity, which can result in significant slippage, meaning the trade doesn't open or close at the expected price.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect EAs or strategies that scalp in seconds during or immediately after high-impact news events, or open a trade just before the market closes and close it right after the market opens, exploiting the large price gap, we treat it as News or Gap Scalping.
Latency Arbitrage Across Platforms or Exchanges: This is when a trader tries to exploit price delays or differences between platforms or brokers.
For example, a trader might see a price on Platform A and quickly trade on Platform B before the price updates — just to profit from the delay.
This is considered unfair and unethical, as it uses technical glitches or delays, not real trading skill.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If we detect you placing trades to profit from price delays or discrepancies between different trading platforms, feeds, or exchanges, we treat this as Arbitrage.
This includes using EAs or bots designed to do this automatically.
Exploiting Price Feed Errors: If you see an incorrect price, a delayed chart update, or any technical bug on the platform, and you open a trade just to profit from that mistake.
That is considered abuse of the system and is strictly prohibited.
Examples of Prohibited Behavior:
- Trading on incorrect prices that haven't updated properly.
- Exploiting stuck candles, delayed quotes, or execution errors.
- Using a robot or EA to detect and act on price feed delays or misquotes.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If you trade using system glitches or errors — intentionally or repeatedly — your account will be terminated.
High-Frequency Trading (HFT): placing trades where most trades are opened and closed within a few minutes or less.
Sophisticated algorithms or bots are used to take advantage of small price changes at extremely high speeds. It aims to exploit micro-movements, not demonstrate real trading skill. It often results in abusive or manipulative trading behaviour.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If most of your trades or profit made from trades executed in just a few seconds or less, your account will be flagged as HFT.
Tick-Scalping: is a trading method where traders Open and close trades within seconds and base their trades on every tiny price movement (tick) — even changes as small as 0.1 pip and rely on speed over strategy, trying to exploit micro-fluctuations in the market.
These systems exploit price feed, and do not on real market conditions. They does not demonstrate real trading skill or consistency. It can cause platform overload and unfair system use.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
Trades that are opened and closed within 60 seconds may be reviewed by our Risk Team. If your overall strategy shows tick-based behaviour (frequent trades within seconds), your account will be terminated with no refund.
Using Expert Advisors (EAs) or bots that perform tick-scalping is strictly prohibited.
Use of Emulators: An emulator is a program that mimics another device or system, such as a mobile phone or trading terminal.
Traders may use them to:
- Bypass restrictions set by the platform.
- Spoof devices or trading locations.
- Run automated bots or EAs in ways that are hard to trace.
🧑⚖️ Verdict
If CTI’s risk team detects emulator usage on your account, your account will be terminated immediately with no refund.
This includes use of emulators on mobile, desktop, or virtual environments designed to simulate another system.