Help CenterCaution with Third-Party EAs
You can trade with any genuine EA you developed or bought to use personally.
At CTI, we're keenly aware of the significant role that Expert Advisors (EAs) can play in automating and optimizing your trading strategies. We're committed to enhancing your trading experience, which is why we fully support using EAs across all our accounts in every phase of your trading journey.
However, we want to draw attention to the risks of using third-party Expert Advisors (EAs) available on the open market, which might breach our rules against copy trading.
Copy Trading of Other Person's Signals
This involves automatically or manually copying the trades, trading strategies of another trader, Group Trading, funded account management services, or using the same EA across two or more traders.
It's prohibited because it often involves using someone else's trading signals without proper authorization or understanding rather than genuinely depending on the actual performance of the trader who signed up with CTI.
However, The Client can copy trades from their personal account to our funded account, provided the Client can supplement proof to us and comply with the terms and conditions.
Martingale Style Trading
This involves opening more positions (regardless of position size) as the price moves in the opposite of the trade direction in an attempt to recover previous losses and make a profit once the price returns to the original open price.
This trading method is prohibited as it only works in a ranging market. Once the price starts moving in 1 direction, this strategy always, without exception, fails in the end with a margin call and wiping out the complete trading account.
Grid Style Trading
Grid Trading is a trading strategy where multiple buy and sell orders are placed at predefined price levels on a trading chart, typically both above and below the current market price, forming a grid-like pattern.
These orders create a structured grid of trades that aims to capitalize on price fluctuations within a certain range.
As the market moves, these orders are executed when the price reaches the predetermined levels. When the market moves in one direction, the profitable trades in that direction can offset potential losses from the opposite direction.
While Grid Trading seeks to minimize risk, sudden and strong market trends can lead to significant losses. Additionally, a prolonged trend in one direction could result in a large accumulation of losing trades on one side of the grid.
High-Frequency Trading (HFT)
This involves executing orders at extremely high speeds, often measured in microseconds or milliseconds.
Ultra-Fast Scalping
Similar to regular scalping, this strategy involves making a large number of small profits on price changes occurring within seconds or minutes. It's "ultra-fast" due to the extremely short holding period and rapid execution.
Latency Arbitrage Trading
This exploits delays in the price feed between different trading platforms or locations.
Tick-Scalping Strategies
These refer to strategies that make trades based on every minor price movement or "tick" in the market.
Reverse Arbitrage Trading
This strategy aims to profit from pricing inefficiencies in the market without actually taking any risk.
Hedge Arbitrage Trading
This involves buying and selling the same or similar assets simultaneously in different markets to take advantage of price differentials on the same or different accounts.
Use of Emulators
Emulators mimic the operations of another program or system. Their use in trading, particularly with EAs, can be problematic as they can replicate prohibited strategies or bypass system protections.
News Scalping EAs
To take advantage of price fluctuations that occur during major news releases or significant economic events by executing trades based on rapid scalping techniques. Such EAs are prohibited because they rely on extreme short-term volatility, which can be unpredictable, and often lead to significant slippage due to the thin liquidity available during the news release times.
Multi-Account Reverse Trading
Automatically or manually mirroring or replicating trades from a primary account to several other accounts but in the opposite direction. Essentially, if the primary account takes a long position, the connected accounts will take a short position, and vice versa. These types of EAs are prohibited because they involve a form of strategy manipulation that can be used to exploit certain trading conditions and can also lead to unfair trading practices.
Gamble to pass
To prevent gambling behaviour and ensure responsible trading practices to assess the trader’s performance on our funding programs accurately, it is prohibited to attempt to pass challenges or evaluations using gambling behaviour. Traders must demonstrate consistent trading activity over the assessment period to pass to the next level. Gambling behaviour is defined as:
(1) Maxing out on the account's leverage or risk or taking unusually large trades on the account in the hope of passing the challenge in one or a few positions.
(2) Leaving a position open until it hits the profit target with no trade management
(This is not to be confused with swing trading, where the trader has managed the position).
(3) Hedging across accounts, hoping one account will hit the profit target while the other loses.
(4) Churning of Accounts where the client buys many accounts and trades them with excessive risk with the sole objective of hitting the profit target quickly with no consideration to risk management or showing consistent trading performance.
Each of these strategies involves risk, complexity, or potential market manipulation, which is why they are typically prohibited in many trading environments. Trading any of the strategies above will result in the immediate termination of the funded account.