1. Trading is risky. Read this even if you skip the rest.
Trading futures, forex, and the derivative products available through prop-firm programs involves substantial risk of loss and is not suitable for every investor. You can lose your entire account balance — and in some products, you can lose more than your initial deposit.
Past performance, whether your own or anyone else’s, does not indicate future results. Backtests are not live trading. A strategy that worked last month can fail this month with no warning. Markets do not owe you a return.
Only trade with money you can afford to lose. If you’re trading with funds you need for rent, tuition, debt service, or retirement, stop and reconsider.
2. Futures-specific risk
Futures contracts use leverage. A small adverse price move can wipe out the margin posted on a contract and then some. Overnight gaps, exchange halts, limit-move days, and liquidity vacuums during news events can move prices through your stop and fill you well past your intended level. Stops are not guaranteed at any specific price.
Micro contracts (ES → MES, NQ → MNQ, etc.) reduce notional exposure proportionally but do not change the qualitative nature of these risks.
3. Forex-specific risk
The retail forex market is over-the-counter and decentralized. Spreads widen, liquidity disappears, and broker-side execution varies between firms and even between sessions at the same firm. Slippage on stops during weekend gaps or central-bank surprises has historically wiped accounts within minutes. High leverage (50:1, 100:1, 500:1) amplifies both gains and losses.
Forex regulation varies wildly by jurisdiction. The consumer protections you’d expect from a US equities account often do not apply.
4. Prop-firm reality check
Prop-firm evaluations advertise life-changing payouts. The published pass-rate data, where it’s published at all, is sobering: the great majority of evaluation accounts do not pass, and the majority of funded accounts that do pass are lost to drawdown or rule violation within their first several payout cycles. Specific rates vary by firm, by product, and over time; don’t take a marketing leaderboard as representative.
Prop firms are not your broker in the traditional sense. They’re a counterparty to a contract that pays you a share of simulated or hedged P&L if you satisfy a list of rules. The rules — daily-loss limit, trailing drawdown, news lockout, scaling targets, consistency requirements — are enforced by the firm and can change with notice. Read your firm’s rules carefully and re-read them whenever the firm announces updates.
Trades Terminal does not guarantee you will pass an evaluation, retain a funded account, or receive a payout. The rule-enforcement features inside the product are aids, not insurance. A rule guard depends on accurate broker data, accurate firm-rule encoding, and your own decision to honor the alert. We model the rules to the best of our ability and we publish the model, but the firm’s actual enforcement is authoritative.
5. This is a tool, not advice
Nothing in Trades Terminal — including charts, indicators, AI-generated commentary, journal prompts, alerts, replay annotations, and copy-trading configurations — is investment advice, financial advice, tax advice, or legal advice. We do not know your personal circumstances, your risk tolerance, or your financial goals. The product makes no recommendation to enter, exit, or hold any position.
AI commentary in particular can be confidently wrong. The models we use will produce plausible-sounding analysis that is, on inspection, fabricated, miscalibrated, or stale. Treat it as a junior analyst’s first draft, not a basis for trading.
If you want personalized financial advice, consult a licensed advisor in your jurisdiction.
6. Technology risk
All trading software can and does fail. Internet outages, broker API outages, our own outages, browser crashes, mistyped tickets, mis-clicked panic buttons, and misconfigured automations have all caused real losses for real traders. Our published status pageis the canonical source for ongoing incidents on our side. You should have an out-of-band fallback for position management — typically a direct login to your broker’s own platform — and you should know your broker’s emergency-close phone number.
7. Copy trading and automation
The copy-trading and automation features let one decision propagate to many accounts. That can multiply the upside of a good plan; it also multiplies the downside of a bad one. A mis-sized leader account, a stale follower mapping, or an unhandled rejection can fan out a single mistake across every funded account you have. Test new configurations on small contract sizes first; review the audit log on the first day a new mapping is live.
8. Regulatory note
Trades Terminal is a software vendor. We are not a broker-dealer, futures commission merchant (FCM), registered investment adviser (RIA), commodity trading adviser (CTA), or commodity pool operator (CPO). We do not custody funds. We are not a member of FINRA, NFA, or SIPC. Your broker holds your funds and is the regulated entity for execution and clearing.
Whether trading the instruments your broker offers is legal in your jurisdiction is your responsibility to verify.
9. Acknowledgment
By creating an account, connecting a broker, or placing an order through Trades Terminal, you acknowledge that you’ve read this Risk Disclosure, that you understand the risks described above, and that you accept full responsibility for your trading decisions and their outcomes.