The rules that void payouts
Facts checked October 22, 2026
Beginners arrive with the strategies the internet sold them. The rulebook has usually already answered — in arithmetic or in discretion.
A martingale doubles size after each loss. Against a 4–10% maximum drawdown, the doubling sequence reaches the floor before the recovery trade arrives — the strategy does not need a ban; the geometry is the ban. What the written ban adds is reach: "gambling" clauses (FTMO's terms, clauses 7.3–7.9, are the dataset's clearest) let a firm void trades and forfeit rewards it deems gambling-like at its own discretion. Grid trading without doubling sits in the same discretion zone at most firms.
Copying another trader's account, following signal services, and running robots that other accounts also run are banned or denial-triggering at nearly every tracked firm — detected, typically, when correlated accounts are reviewed at payout. The narrow exceptions are your own robot, written or configured by you, used by you alone (FTMO's formulation) and copying between your own accounts at some firms during evaluation only.
Banned everywhere in the dataset: strategies that feed on stale prices or micro-movements rather than market direction. Ordinary fast scalping is tolerated; the line is whether the edge survives honest execution. If a vendor sold you the strategy with the challenge as its intended venue, that sequence — vendor, then challenge — is itself the tell.
The verdict gives you the expected cost and the rule that applies to you. The Challenge Odds Kit gives you, program by program, the before-you-buy checklist, the style-versus-rules worksheets, the expected-cost workbook, and the payout-protection playbook: how to never hand a firm the excuse to refuse your payout.
Included in the $39 Challenge Odds Kit
Sources: the firms' own published pages (price grids and program terms), the FPFX Technology dataset of 300,000+ accounts reported by Finance Magnates (2024), pass and payout figures published by the firms themselves, and regulator publications (CFTC, FSMA, Consob, CNMV). Recorded and checked October 22, 2026. Prices on this site are the list prices recorded on that date, promotions excluded; if a price or a rule has moved since, the firm's own page wins — and write to help@doogex.com so we can correct ours.