Prohibited strategies

At Noctorial, traders who succeed in the long term do so because their results reflect real skill: real analysis, real risk management, real consistency. The rules in this article exist to protect that standard for everyone on the platform.

If a strategy generates profits by exploiting a technical loophole instead of reading the market, those profits do not reflect trading ability and are not eligible for compensation. That is the principle behind every rule here.

Latency Arbitrage

What it is: Latency arbitrage exploits milliseconds of delay between data feeds. The trader sees a price movement on an external feed before it updates on the Noctorial platform and enters a position based on information that our prices have not yet reflected.

Why it is prohibited: It generates artificial profits without real market exposure. The edge comes from a technical delay, not from analysis or skill.

Example: Gold rises on an external feed. Before that movement appears on the Noctorial platform, the trader places a buy order, profiting from a price they knew before our system did.

Reverse Arbitrage

What it is: Exploiting price differences between Noctorial and another platform or correlated asset. The trader acts on information from one source that has not yet been reflected in another, creating a risk-free position.

Why it is prohibited: It completely avoids genuine market risk. The evaluation loses its meaning if profits come from desynchronization between platforms rather than reading the market.

Hedging

What it is: Opening opposite positions in the same asset on one account, in multiple Noctorial accounts, whether belonging to the same holder or coordinated within a group, to ensure that at least one account generates profits regardless of market direction.

Why it is prohibited: It eliminates real market exposure and turns evaluation into a mathematical trick. It prevents any accurate evaluation of an individual trader's ability.

Example: Going long on EUR/USD in one Noctorial account while simultaneously going short on EUR/USD in another account of the same trader.

Tick Scalping

What it is: Opening and closing trades in seconds, sometimes in milliseconds, to capture minimal price movements of one to three pips. Almost always executed by automated high-frequency systems.

Why it is prohibited: It overloads server infrastructure and exploits timing inefficiencies instead of applying any real market analysis or risk management.

High-Frequency Trading (HFT)

What it is: A very high number of orders at extremely high speeds, often exploiting small price discrepancies or imbalances in the order book.

Why it is prohibited: HFT does not reflect genuine trading skill and puts an extreme load on the platform's infrastructure. It is incompatible with a fair evaluation environment.

Martingale

What it is: A strategy that doubles, or significantly increases, the position size after each loss, based on the assumption that a winning trade will eventually recover all previous losses.

Why it is prohibited: It creates exponentially growing exposure with each losing trade and leads to extreme, uncontrolled drawdowns. It is fundamentally incompatible with disciplined risk management.

Example: A trader loses three trades in a row and doubles their lot size after each one, betting that the next trade will recover everything. The account reaches critical drawdown levels before any profit is realized.

Grid Trading

What it is: Placing multiple buy and sell orders at fixed price intervals above and below the current price, relying solely on price movement to generate profits across the grid.

Why it is prohibited: Grid strategies accumulate a large open exposure across many simultaneous positions and do not have a defined risk limit. A sustained directional movement can quickly wipe out an account.

Abusive Automation: EAs and Automated Trading

Automated tools are permitted at Noctorial, but you must remain in control at all times. You can use technology to fine-tune your decisions, not to replace them.

What is permitted:
Tools that assist your manual trading are fully permitted. This includes systems that calculate your lot size, suggest stop-loss and take-profit levels, or help you manage open positions. If the tool informs your decision and you execute it, that is permitted.

What is not permitted:
Any system that takes you out of the execution decision is prohibited. This includes:
- Commercial or self-built trading robots that execute trades automatically without the direct involvement or understanding of the underlying logic by the trader
- EAs that integrate external signals automatically (from Telegram channels, signal marketplaces, or any third-party source) and act on them without manual confirmation
- High-frequency trading systems that execute hundreds of trades per minute
- Any EA designed to exploit execution bugs, latency, or spread anomalies

Using a prohibited EA is a serious violation. Your account will be terminated immediately.

⚠️ Owning or understanding an EA is not enough. If it executes trades without you actively deciding on each one, it is prohibited, regardless of whether you built it yourself or bought it.

Why this rule exists: Noctorial evaluates traders, not systems. A Funded Trader is someone who can manage capital with judgment and discipline, someone who understands the risk they take in each position. Activating a bot and waiting for the results demonstrates none of that. You cannot automate your responsibility.

Account Sharing

What it is: Allowing another person to access or trade on your account, using third-party services to pass challenges, or executing copy trading from unauthorized external sources.

Why it is prohibited: Noctorial evaluates individual traders. Account sharing violates our KYC and AML obligations and compromises the integrity of the entire evaluation process.

⚠️ If we detect account sharing, the account is terminated immediately and no refund of the evaluation fee will be issued.

Exploitation of Technical Errors

What it is: Taking advantage of platform technical errors (frozen prices, execution errors, zero spreads, or data delays) to place trades at prices that do not reflect real market conditions.

Why it is prohibited: Profits generated from technical errors are not the result of skill. They distort results and undermine trust in the platform for all traders.

Gambling and Performance-less Trading

What it is: Emotional and impulsive trading without underlying analysis: revenge trading after losses, random entries, overleveraging out of frustration, or opening large positions based purely on intuition or hope.

Why it is prohibited: Noctorial exists to evaluate and reward professional trading ability. Gambling completely contradicts that purpose and leads to high failure rates, extreme drawdowns, and behavior that is detrimental to both the trader and the program.

💡 A bad run of trades is part of trading. How you respond to it reveals more about your ability than the losses themselves. Reduce size, take a step back and re-evaluate, do not double down.

Account Rolling

What it is: Buying multiple evaluation accounts to apply high-risk, all-or-nothing strategies across all of them simultaneously, hoping one will pass by chance. Then abandoning the funded accounts after poor performance and starting over with a new evaluation.

Why it is prohibited: It turns the program into a lottery instead of an evaluation of skill. It undermines the sustainability of the program and is unfair to traders who approach it with genuine discipline.

How we detect prohibited strategies

We monitor every account using more than 50 variables: trade durations, entry and exit timing, position sizing patterns, lot consistency, IP addresses, login behavior, and correlation with other accounts on the platform. Prohibited strategies leave clear patterns, and we identify them reliably.

If your account is flagged, it will be terminated immediately, without prior notice and without refund of the evaluation fee.

One thing to remember

Traders who succeed at Noctorial in the long run are those who treat it as a professional environment from day one. If a strategy seems to be exploiting the system instead of reading the market, it most likely is. Trade your edge, manage your risk, and the rules stop being a barrier to become part of your winning routine.