EA & Copy-Trading Rules

EA and copy-trading rules define what kinds of automation and trade duplication a firm permits. Expert advisors (EAs) are programs that trade automatically on platforms like MetaTrader; copy-trading replicates one account’s trades onto others. Firms commonly prohibit strategies they view as gaming their simulated pricing — latency arbitrage, tick-scalping exploits, reverse-arbitrage, and high-frequency methods — and many limit copying the same trades across multiple of their own accounts, since that converts one edge into many correlated payouts the firm must honor. At the same time, plenty of firms welcome a trader’s own EA, provided it is genuinely your strategy and not a prohibited exploit. The boundaries (and the penalties, from voided profits to bans) are highly firm-specific, so this is a rulebook section worth reading in full before automating anything.

In plain English — These rules govern automated and copied trading. An EA ("expert advisor") is an automated trading bot; copy-trading means mirroring trades across accounts or from another trader. Firms restrict practices they consider exploitative — like latency or arbitrage bots, mass account copying, or HFT — while many allow personal EAs you built yourself. What is permitted differs sharply by firm.

A firm may allow your own custom EA on a single account but ban copying identical trades across ten funded accounts to multiply payouts — flagging the copied accounts for a breach.