Two things separate how active futures traders actually trade from what most prop firms will let them do: scalping and trading the news. Most firms quietly ban both. Minimum hold times that kill sub-minute trades. News lockouts that void anything opened seconds before a print. Some forfeit the profit outright.
So the question comes up before anyone buys a challenge: can you scalp on a prop firm, and can you trade the news? On a Rev One Flex account, the answer to both is yes. No minimum hold time, no news wait window, no forfeiture. Here is what that actually means, and where the real line sits.
The short answer
Scalping and news trading are both fully allowed on Rev One, in the challenge and once you are funded. There is no minimum hold time and no waiting period around news events.
The only place they show up is your funded split. Rev One prices every payout off six behavior scores. Heavy scalping feeds one of them, heavy news trading feeds another. Lean on either and the relevant score drops, which trims your split. It never fails the account.
That is the whole model in one sentence: trade how you want, and how clean you trade sets how much of the profit you keep.
Why most prop firms say no
Minimum hold times and news bans are not there to protect you. They exist because the usual prop model makes money when traders fail and reset. A rule that voids your best trade is a rule that sells another challenge.
News trading gets banned the hardest because it is where a good read pays fastest. Two minutes around a CPI or an FOMC print can make a cycle. So most firms wall it off: no trades in a window before and after the event, and anything caught inside is forfeited.
Scalping gets throttled the same way, usually with a minimum hold time. Hold a trade less than 60 seconds and it does not count, or it counts against you. That kills the entire style for anyone who trades order flow off the tape.
Rev One took the opposite line. The rules do not decide whether you trade. Your behavior decides how much you keep. That is why the funded rules grade instead of breach.
How scalping works on a Rev One account
Scalp as fast as you want. There is no minimum hold time, no cap on trade count, and automated systems are allowed too.
On the funded side, trades that close in under 60 seconds feed the Scalping Score. The more of your volume that is sub-minute, the lower that score sits. A lower score lowers your split. That is the entire cost, and it only applies once you are funded and taking payouts.
What this is not: a ban, a hold timer, or a forfeiture. A scalper and a swing trader can run the exact same account. The scalper who books most of their profit in seconds keeps a smaller share than one who mixes in some longer holds, on the same dollar profit. Nobody gets closed for it.
If you scalp for a living, the practical move is not to stop. It is to know that the score exists and to let a few trades breathe when the setup allows, so you sit higher on the split.
How news trading works
Same shape. Trade the news, no wait period, no void.
The scoring input is a 2-minute window: event time plus or minus two minutes, measured on the open or the close of your trade. Enter or exit inside that window around a scheduled event and it feeds the News Exposure Score. Do it often and that score drops, which trims your split. Once. Never a breach.
Two things that do not count against it:
- Holding a position through a news event without opening or closing inside the 2-minute window. Riding a trade you already had on is not news trading.
- Adjusting stops or take-profits around news. Moving your orders is not an entry or an exit, so it does not touch the score.
So the honest framing is: you can trade CPI, FOMC, NFP, and the cash open all you want. If most of your profit comes from those two-minute windows, your News Exposure Score reflects it and your split follows. If news is just part of a broader book, it barely moves.
The six scores, and what "your score sets your split" means
Every funded payout at Rev One is shaped by six discipline scores and a drawdown multiplier. Scalping and news are two of the six. Here is the full set.
| Score | What it reads |
|---|---|
| Consistency | How evenly profit is spread across days, not one lucky session |
| Scalping | Share of profit booked in sub-60-second trades |
| News exposure | Trades entered or exited in the 2-minute window around events |
| Cycle drawdown | How deep the account dug during the cycle |
| Minimum days | Trading spread across enough days, not crammed into one |
| Diversification | Whether risk is spread across instruments, not one symbol |
The scores average into your split. Trade clean and you keep up to 90% of your profit. Trade like a gambler and the split shrinks. The account stays open until you have actually broken your risk, not your style.
The rule set behind it is flat across every size: a 5% profit target, a 4% max loss in the challenge, and an 8% max loss once funded, where crossing 4% lowers your split instead of closing the account. Five profitable days and you can request a payout.
What actually gets you in trouble
Scalping and news are allowed. Plenty is not, and it is worth knowing the real lines so you never trip one by accident.
The banned list is about manufactured risk, not trading style:
- Martingale and averaging down. Adding contracts to a position that is moving against you, to lower your entry. This is the headline prohibition. Scaling into a winner is the opposite and is fine.
- Group hedging and wash trades. Offsetting positions across accounts, or trading with yourself to farm the payoff. Running several accounts in parallel is allowed; coordinating them to dodge limits is not.
- Undisclosed copy trading. Mirroring a paid signal service or another account without approval.
On top of the strategy rules, two hard limits bind every account:
- Contract caps by size. Each size has a gross cap on full contracts and micros. Orders past it are rejected at the platform.
- Restricted instruments. Gold (GC), silver (SI), copper (HG), platinum (PL), natural gas (NG), and E-mini natural gas (QG) are not tradeable right now.
The caps scale with the account you pick. Full contracts and micros are counted separately, gross across every symbol:
| Account | Max full contracts | Max micros |
|---|---|---|
| $25K | 2 | 20 |
| $50K | 4 | 40 |
| $100K | 6 | 60 |
| $150K | 10 | 100 |
None of this touches a scalper or a news trader running a normal book. The prohibitions are about faking risk or hiding a strategy, not about how fast you click.
How to trade it in practice
Three things to carry into the account:
- Trade your style. Scalp the open, trade the print, run automation. None of it is against the rules, in the challenge or funded.
- Watch the scores if you want the top split. Scalping and news both feed a score. If you want to sit near 90%, mix in trades that are not all sub-minute and not all inside news windows. If you would rather scalp everything and take a smaller cut, that is a real choice, not a violation.
- Know the banned list. Averaging down into losers, hedging across accounts, wash trades, undisclosed copiers, over-cap size, and the restricted metals and gas. Everything else is yours.
For how the payout and the split actually pay out, read prop firm payouts explained. For the drawdown line that decides whether the account survives at all, read trailing vs end-of-day drawdown. And if you are still deciding whether a 1-step even fits you, start with how to pass a futures prop firm challenge.
See how the rules compare
Scalp it, trade the news, run it fast. On Rev One that is a scoring question, not a breach.