What is the permitted trading times rule?

•  Exit all positions 10 minutes before the close. No holding positions when the market closes.
• You can trade anytime when the market is open, with the exception of trading over TradeDay's tier 1 economic data releases.

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Full details on the restriction of trading tier 1 economic data releases can be found here: https://tradeday.freshdesk.com/a/solutions/articles/10300006327

Traders carrying open positions when the market closes will fail the evaluation.

To avoid a breach of this rule we strongly advise closing all open positions and deleting all orders in the order book at least 10 minutes before the market is due to close.

For example, if you are trading crude oil, the market closes daily at 4 pm CT, close all positions, and delete all orders in your order book, before 3.50 pm CT.

Trading session definition.

For CME products, a trading session is defined from the opening of the market at 5 pm CT through to the close the next day.  Any trading taking place during this session is considered a day.

For example, if you place a trade in the ES at 6 pm on Wednesday and again at 3 pm on Thursday, these are part of the same trading day, and the Evaluation metrics are calculated off this. 

Different products have different closing times.

For example, agricultural products close earlier than most of the other CME Group products.

It is your responsibility to know when the product you are trading closes. Any trader that has an open position when their market closes fails the Evaluation Challenge. 

For a list of market closing times please see the CME groups website here:

https://www.cmegroup.com/trading-hours.html (opens in a new tab)

Also, please be aware of any trading holiday market closures or shortened sessions. We will do our best to forewarn you of any impending changes to a market closing time on our site, but it is the trader’s responsibility to be aware of any changes to their own products.

https://www.cmegroup.com/tools-information/holiday-calendar.html (opens in a new tab)

Trading generally resumes after 5 pm CT. Overnight trading is allowed, but any open positions must be closed before the market closes the next day.

For example: If you open a crude oil position at 5.30 pm CT on Tuesday, it must be closed before 3.50 pm CT on Wednesday.

For funded traders, we require all open positions to be closed 10 minutes before the close of the product you are trading. Any trader holding a position during this time will be issued a warning. Any funded trader holding a position into the close will lose their funded trading account. 

Why do we have this rule?

When funded traders are trading in the live market, it is impossible for the trading group to risk manage positions when the market is closed. If a breaking news event, or data release happens when the market is closed, the price could open significantly against trader's risk limits in the live market. 

Why we don't auto-liquidate traders on their behalf.

Our broker has this functionality, but its limited. It only allows us to set this function for just one time of day. This represents a risk managment issue for us as we are funding traders who are trading products that have different closing times. And closing times are subject to change (for example, most markets close early on US federal holidays).

Finally, we believe that our policy will help the trader develop the habit of managing their own positions, which will benefit them when they are operating outside of safety of the TradeDay environment.