MarketMates Prop Trading Terms and Conditions

Prop Trading Terms and Conditions

1. Definitions

Challenge Account: A demo account used to assess your trading performance.
Funded Account: A live or simulated account with real profit-sharing eligibility.
Max Loss: The maximum allowable loss from the starting account balance.
Maximum Daily Loss: The maximum loss allowed in a single trading day.
Profit Split: The percentage of net profits paid to the trader.
Trading Period: The minimum duration required until the challenge can be considered passed.
Trading Days: The minimum number of days where trades need to be placed with a profit of 0.5% or more before a challenge can be considered passed.
Stop-loss: A predefined exit rule that automatically closes a trade to limit losses when the market moves against you.
Risk Per Trade: The amount you are willing to lose on a trade based on the distance between your entry price and your stop-loss price.

2. Program Overview

Our prop trading is a performance-based program that allows traders to demonstrate their skills and qualify for capital allocation.

Programs can be found on our website.

3. Eligibility

3.1 Age and country restrictions

Minimum age: 18 years
Restricted countries not eligible (see the prohibited countries list)

3.2 Simultaneous accounts

Only one active challenge per person
Each user may maintain up to three funded accounts at one time
The maximum combined account value across funded accounts at any one time is $300,000

4. Challenge Rules

To qualify for a funded account under the prop trading program, participants must complete a predefined Challenge. The purpose of the Challenge is to assess a trader’s ability to manage risk and demonstrate consistent performance under real-world conditions.

4.1 Account Objectives

The following rules apply unless otherwise stated on the product page at the time of purchase or registration:

Profit Target: You must reach a cumulative net profit target of [e.g., 8%] of the starting balance without breaching the loss limits.
Maximum Loss: The Maximum Daily Loss is calculated as a percentage of the starting balance of the Challenge account, not the account balance at the start of each trading day.
For example, on a $100,000 Challenge account with a 3% Maximum Daily Loss, the maximum amount you may lose in any single trading day is $3,000.
This daily loss limit remains the same throughout the Challenge, regardless of whether the account balance increases or decreases.
Your total losses for any trading day must not exceed this amount.
Maximum Daily Loss: If your account equity drops by more than [e.g., 5%] from the day’s starting balance at any point, the Challenge will be considered failed.
Trading Days: The number of trading days where a 0.5% profit or more must be achieved before passing the challenge.
Risk Per Trade: All challenges have a maximum risk per trade requirement. You must not risk more than 1% per trade. You may not bypass this rule by opening multiple positions in the same instrument at the same or similar price, totalling more than 1% risk. Adding to trades at different prices is allowed.
Stop-loss: All challenges require all trades to have a stop-loss in place. The stop-loss must be placed within 120 seconds of the entry; otherwise, the challenge could be considered breached. It’s not permissible to bypass this rule by scalping without a stop-loss and closing trades in less than 120 seconds.
Challenge type: Trades must match the trade duration of the challenge type. See the table below for definitions:

Challenge Type	Requirement
Best Mate	Trades must be closed by the end of the week (Friday 5PM ET).
Scalping	Trades must be closed by the end of the day (Daily 5PM ET).
Day Trading	Trades must be closed by the end of the day (Daily 5PM ET).
Swing	Profitable trades must be held for 24 hours or more. Holding over the weekend is allowed.

Viewing trade opening times: You can view the open date and time of a trade inside the trading platform in the open positions window.

Position limits: The maximum number of simultaneous positions a trader can hold is five.

4.2 Lot Size, Trading Days, and Frequency

Challenges require a minimum number of trading days. Trading days are defined at days where at least 0.5% profit is achieved on the account.
There is no restriction on position size beyond platform-imposed margin requirements and challenge requirements (such as maximum risk per trade).
Traders may scale in or out of trades freely, provided all risk parameters are respected.

4.3 Platform-Specific Rules

All trades must be placed via the Match-Trade platform provided by MarketMates. Trading through third-party platforms or integrations is not supported unless explicitly approved.

4.4 Challenge Review & Outcome

Once the profit target is reached without a violation of the loss limits or rules, the Challenge is marked as “Passed.”
Traders will be contacted via email and may be required to complete identity verification before moving to a funded account.
If any rule is breached during the Challenge, the account will be marked as “Failed,” and traders will be notified accordingly.

4.5 Challenge Reattempts

In some cases, traders may reattempt the Challenge by:

Repurchasing a new challenge
Receiving a reset from support if applicable

4.6 Modifications to Challenge Rules

Challenge rules may vary depending on the tier selected and will always be clearly stated prior to signup. MarketMates reserves the right to adjust rules for new challenges or funded accounts.

4.7 Soft Breaches

Certain rule breaches may be classified as a “Soft Fail.” A Soft Fail does not automatically result in the immediate failure or termination of a Challenge. Where a Soft Fail occurs, the Challenge will generally remain active and trading may continue for the remainder of the Challenge period. Soft Fails may be reviewed during the Challenge or at its conclusion.

Examples of breaches that may be treated as Soft Fails include, but are not limited to:

Soft Breach	Description
Risk per trade exceeds 1%	Risking more than 1% of the account on a single trade or a group of related trades that collectively exceed the 1% limit.
No stop-loss used	Opening a position without placing a stop-loss within 120 seconds of entry.
Holding trades during restricted news events	Holding, opening or closing trades during restricted high-impact news periods where the selected Challenge prohibits news trading.
Holding trades overnight	Keeping positions open past the permitted daily close where the selected Challenge requires all trades to be closed by the end of the trading day.
Holding trades over the weekend	Keeping positions open over the weekend where the selected Challenge does not permit weekend holding.
Exceeding the maximum number of positions	Holding more than five simultaneous open positions at any one time.

Following review, MarketMates may, at its sole discretion, determine that the Challenge has been failed, require the Challenge to be restarted, grant a complimentary restart, or apply another appropriate remedy. The classification of any breach as a Soft Fail, and the outcome following review, does not create an entitlement to any specific result and is determined solely by MarketMates.

5. News & Weekend Trading Rules

To protect the integrity of the evaluation process and reduce exposure to abnormal volatility, traders participating in any Challenge or funded account must adhere to the following restrictions regarding high-impact news events and weekend exposure:

5.1 High-Impact News Events

You are not permitted to open or close trades during a restricted window surrounding high-impact economic releases.

Restriction Window: You may not open or close a position within 15 minutes before and 3 minutes after the scheduled release time of a high-impact news event unless your challenge specifically allows news trading.
Definition of High-Impact News: Events classified as “high impact” on the official economic calendar used by MarketMates (e.g. Non-Farm Payrolls, CPI, central bank rate decisions). This calender can be found inside the MarketMates platform.
Violations: Any trades opened or closed during this restricted window may result in disqualification from the Challenge or termination of a funded account.
Pending Orders: Traders must also avoid placing or modifying pending orders (such as stop or limit orders) that would be triggered during the restricted window.
Gambling on news events: Gambling a large portion of the account on a news trade is not allowed on any challenge (including challenges that allow news trading). You are not permitted to intentionally increase lot size over news events, or to use more than 50% of your available margin on a trade (or group of trades) prior to a new event. (The available margin here refers to the maximum trading volume allowed by your account equity.)

5.2 News Trading on Funded Accounts

News trading restrictions also apply to live funded accounts unless explicitly waived in writing. Traders who engage in activity during restricted times without authorisation risk forfeiting profits or account access.

5.3 Weekend Holding

Challenge Accounts: You are not permitted to hold any open positions over the weekend unless the specific challenge tier allows it. Some challenges do not have a requirement to close the trade before the weekend.
Weekend Holding Window: All open trades must be closed before market close. Positions held past this time are in breach of the rules.
Funded Accounts: Weekend holding may be permitted for funded traders under specific conditions and may require prior approval.

5.4 Rationale

These restrictions are designed to prevent account breaches due to slippage, widening spreads, and extreme volatility during events when normal risk parameters may be exceeded.

6. Prohibited Trading Practices

To maintain a fair, transparent, and rule-based environment for all participants, the following trading practices are strictly prohibited during both Challenge and Funded Account phases. Breach of any of these may result in immediate disqualification, account termination, and forfeiture of profits.

6.1 Exploitation of Platform or Broker Conditions

Latency Arbitrage: Trading that attempts to exploit delays in price feeds or server latency.
Swap Arbitrage: Holding positions solely to exploit rollover or swap conditions without a valid trading strategy.
Bonus Arbitrage: Using funded accounts in conjunction with external broker bonus schemes to manipulate payout conditions.
Price Manipulation: Any intentional manipulation or abuse of pricing discrepancies or server execution bugs.

6.2 High-Frequency or Tick Scalping Strategies

Tick Scalping: Opening and closing trades within seconds purely to exploit micro-movements without a broader strategy.
Hyper-Frequency Trading: Executing dozens or hundreds of trades per minute using automation or scripts.
Quote Stuffing or Order Flooding: Submitting excessive orders to overload the platform or create artificial market movement.

6.3 Types of Copy Trading, Mirroring, or Account Linking

Signal Copying: Following or duplicating trades from third-party platforms, signals, or social trading networks in real-time.
Multi-Account Coordination: Opening multiple accounts to copy trades, hedge positions, or bypass limits.
Reverse Copying: Taking the opposite side of trades from another known account to manipulate outcomes.

Note: Copy trading of your own funded account to another funded account within MarketMates under the same name is allowed.

6.4 Coordinated or Group Trading Schemes

Team Trading: Coordinating with other traders to impact markets or manipulate performance outcomes.
Opposite Account Trading: Executing the same trade on one account and the opposite on another (especially across Challenge/Funded accounts).

6.5 News & Rollover Window Abuse

Restricted window abuse: Opening or closing positions within the restricted window around high-impact news (see Section 5).
Rollover abuse: Placing or triggering trades during the platform’s low-liquidity rollover window solely to exploit spread widening or price gaps (typically around 00:00 server time).

6.6 External Automation or AI Tools

Unapproved algorithms: Using third-party trading bots, AI tools, or algorithmic scripts not pre-approved by MarketMates.
Unathorised scripts: Running unauthorised integrations or scripts that interact with the platform outside normal user controls.

6.7 Account Misrepresentation & Misuse

Fake Identity: Submitting false or manipulated documents during KYC.
Shared Accounts: Allowing another person to trade on your behalf or using shared credentials.
Multiple Registrations: Creating multiple accounts to abuse free challenge access, discounts, or retry attempts.

6.8 Doubling down or Martingale

Doubling down: Traders are strictly prohibited from using martingale or “doubling down” style strategies. This includes increasing position size after a losing trade, opening a new position in the same instrument with a larger lot size following losses, increasing position size by 50% or more within the same trading session after a loss, or establishing a pattern of progressively larger trades during periods of drawdown.
Strategies that bypass rules: This also includes attempting to bypass these rules by using multiple accounts or by increasing trade size in highly correlated instruments after losses, such as switching from one currency pair to another with similar exposure.
Increasing risk during losing periods: Any behaviour that demonstrates loss-recovery through increased risk rather than consistent risk management may result in account review or termination.

6.9 Grid Trading

Grid trading: Grid trading strategies are strictly prohibited. This includes opening multiple positions in the same or highly correlated instruments at fixed or incremental price intervals without predefined stop losses, particularly when positions are layered as price moves against the trader.
Averaging into losers: Strategies that rely on averaging into losing positions, maintaining clusters of open trades to recover losses, or allowing cumulative exposure to increase during adverse market movements are not permitted.
Accumulating excessive risk: Any systematic approach that results in uncontrolled risk accumulation, excessive drawdown exposure, or delayed loss realization will be considered a breach of risk management rules and may result in account review or termination.

6.10 All-In Trading Behavior

All-In trading behavior is treated as gambling and constitutes a hard breach of these rules at any stage, including both evaluation and funded accounts, and may result in immediate account termination.

All-In Trading Behavior: This refers to any trading activity where a trader commits an excessively large portion of account equity to a single trade or a closely related series of trades without appropriate risk management or in an attempt to hit profit targets from a singular large trade.
Tight stops with large leverage or clustering of trades after stop-out: This includes, but is not limited to, the use of oversized position sizes combined with abnormally tight stop-losses in an attempt to justify excessive leverage, attempts to hold winning trades for disproportionate gains. Such practices can produce extreme profit and loss volatility and are considered inconsistent with disciplined risk management and the firm’s long-term partnership objectives.
Excessive leverage near drawdown limits: This also includes taking excessively large positions when an account is close to breaching maximum drawdown or loss limits, particularly where such trades materially increase the likelihood of immediate account failure.

6.11 Excessive scalping

Excessive Scalping: This refers to a trading pattern where a disproportionate number of trades are held for extremely short durations. For the purposes of these rules, if more than 50% of a trader’s executed positions within a given trading period are held for less than 30 seconds, this will be classified as excessive scalping. Such behavior is not aligned with sustainable trading practices, may be impacted by execution latency and market microstructure, and may result in account review, restriction, or termination at the firm’s discretion.
Systematic attempts to circumvent this rule will not be allowed.

6.12 Other Unethical Behaviour

Any behaviour deemed by MarketMates to be intended to game the system or bypass rules, even if not explicitly listed above.

6.13 Enforcement

MarketMates reserves the right to investigate any trading behaviour and determine at its sole discretion whether the trader has violated any prohibited practices. Violations may result in:

Challenge failure without refund
Forfeiture of payouts
Termination of funded accounts
Permanent disqualification from all MarketMates programs

7. Trading Platform & Strategy Use

All trading activity in both Challenge and Funded Accounts must be conducted via the official MarketMates trading platform, powered by Match-Trade. The following conditions apply to platform use, strategies, and trading methods:

7.1 Platform Access

All accounts are hosted on the MarketMates instance of the Match-Trader platform.
Trading must be conducted via the provided desktop, mobile, or web terminal.
Use of third-party platforms or trade replication software is not permitted unless approved in writing.

7.2 Hedging Policy

Hedging is not allowed.
This includes opening simultaneous long and short positions on the same instrument, either within a single account or across multiple accounts.
Breaches of this rule may result in disqualification or forfeiture of profit.

7.3 Autotrading & API Access

API-based autotrading is permitted, provided the trader registers their API connection with MarketMates prior to activation.
All automated strategies must respect all program rules, including position sizing, timing restrictions (e.g. news rules), and risk limits.
MarketMates reserves the right to disable any API connection at its discretion if it is found to breach terms or disrupt platform performance.

7.4 Autotrading & API Access

Marketmates permits the use of Expert Advisors (EAs) and automated trading systems, provided they are used in a compliant and transparent manner. Traders remain fully responsible for the behaviour and risk management of any automated strategy deployed on their account.

The following practices are strictly prohibited on the Marketmates platform: signal trading via copy trading services, account management through third-party copy traders, high-frequency trading, data feed manipulation, tick scalping, latency arbitrage, reverse arbitrage, hedge arbitrage, and the use of emulators. Any automated or manual strategy that seeks to exploit pricing inefficiencies, execution delays, or platform infrastructure rather than legitimate market movements will be considered a breach of these rules and may result in account review or termination.

7.5 External Integrations

Any integration with external services, dashboards, analytics tools, or risk monitors must be pre-approved in writing.
Unapproved data extraction, trade syncing, or external copy trading services are not allowed.

7.5 Platform Disruptions

In the event of a platform outage, slippage, pricing issue, or unexpected execution behaviour, traders are required to report the issue immediately via the Help Desk. MarketMates will review logs and may offer challenge resets or compensation at its discretion.

8. Market & Instrument Restrictions

MarketMates may restrict trading in exotic FX, illiquid stocks, or crypto under specific conditions.

9. Scaling, Payouts & Inactivity

Once a trader successfully completes a Challenge and is awarded a Funded Account, they become eligible for profit payouts based on the terms of the plan they selected. MarketMates supports performance-based growth for funded traders while maintaining strict risk management protocols.

9.1 Profit Payouts

First withdrawal: First withdrawals are available after 7-days from the first trade on the newly funded account.
Payout Schedule: After the first withdrawal. Profit withdrawals are available according to the payout frequency stated on the plan page (normally daily).
Profit Split: Traders receive a percentage of their net profits as specified in their plan (e.g. 70/30, 90/10). Some challenges allow the trader to select a higher profit split upon checkout.
Withdrawal Process: Payouts must be requested via the trader dashboard and will be processed within the timeframe specified in the plan, subject to account verification and risk review.
There is a 2% profit threshold for withdrawals. For example, the account must be at least 2% in profit before requesting a withdrawal.
Verification: Traders may be asked to complete identity verification prior to their first payout or after reaching a payout threshold. Verification is conducted by an independent third party, and funds cannot be sent to traders if they are not verified.

9.2 Scaling Policy

Performance-Based Scaling: Funded accounts may be scaled up (i.e. given additional capital or buying power) at MarketMates’ discretion based on strong and consistent trading performance.
Conditions: Scaling decisions consider risk-adjusted return, trading discipline, drawdown control, and overall account behaviour.
Scaling Tiers: Specific scaling steps and thresholds may be outlined in each plan’s details or provided by your trader success manager.

9.3 Inactivity

Challenge Accounts: There is no inactivity period for MarketMates challenges. MarketMates reserves the right to add an inactivity period in future, or to close a challenge account due to inactivity when the account holder is uncontactable.
Funded Accounts: Accounts with no trading activity for 30 consecutive days may be paused or closed at MarketMates’ discretion.
Notifications: Traders will be notified via email before deactivation and given the opportunity to re-engage or request a reset (if offered).

10. KYC & ID Verification

All funded traders must complete KYC. Use of fake or unverifiable identification will result in disqualification without refund of fees paid.

11. Refunds

Refundable fees apply only to certain plans. Refunds not issued after trading begins unless otherwise stated.

12. Affiliate Codes & Discounts

Valid only when applied at checkout
Not combinable unless stated
Abuse may result in disqualification

13. Execution & Risk Model

MarketMates is committed to fair, transparent execution. All trades under the prop trading program are executed with no markups applied to spreads. Commission fees vary depending on whether the trader is a member or not.

13.1 Execution

Orders are typically routed directly to the market through liquidity providers.
Some trades may be internally warehoused for risk management purposes, based on automated risk management rules.

13.2 Transparent Pricing

No spread markups: We do not apply any markups to the spread. Members also receive no markups to the commission or finance rates.

13.3 Risk Model Alignment

Our goal is to partner with successful traders. By operating on an A-book model where trades are sent to the underlying market, MarketMates can support profitable traders.

14. Data Use & Privacy

We analyse trading data to improve services. Personal data will not be shared or sold without consent.

15. Intellectual Property

All guides, tools, and educational content remain the property of MarketMates and may not be redistributed.

16. Termination & Disputes

MarketMates may terminate accounts for violations. These terms are governed by the laws of Mauritius . Disputes will be resolved internally or via arbitration.

17. Updates

We may update these terms at any time. Continued participation confirms acceptance of any changes.

📎 Attachments & References

Restricted Countries List
Instrument List – please search in the platform (no login required)