Summary: PineX Capital requires sustainable, reproducible trading under realistic market conditions. Strategies that circumvent evaluation mechanisms, conceal risk or are not based on real skill are prohibited. Violations can lead to warnings, profit withdrawal, account closure or permanent suspension.
Handling of Individual Rule Violations: For individual rule violations, PineX Capital may, after reviewing the specific circumstances of the case, issue a warning and give the trader the opportunity to adjust their trading behaviour accordingly. Whether a warning is issued depends on the nature, severity, frequency and overall context of the violation. There is no entitlement to receive a warning.
PineX Capital is not gambling
PineX Capital is a platform for traders who can demonstrably trade professionally and sustainably – not for gamblers, system exploiters or one-time attempts.
PineX Capital strictly prohibits any form of fraud, manipulation or exploitation of the platform. Traders are required to act as if they were trading under real-world market conditions reproduced in our simulated environment. Trading styles that do not correspond to these conditions or are aimed at circumventing evaluation mechanisms and risk rules are not permitted and may lead to a rule violation without prior notice.
Misuse of the system includes in particular strategies, methods or behavior patterns that are designed to achieve artificially constant, risk-free or non-sustainable results in evaluation or challenge accounts, instead of demonstrating credible trading performance and proper risk management. This also includes approaches that serve solely the purpose of passing an evaluation without the strategy being reproducible in the long term under comparable conditions. Pinex Capital reserves the right to review any trading activity and, at its own discretion, to assess whether a behavior is to be classified as misuse, circumvention or unfair use, even if this behavior is not explicitly mentioned in this guideline.
Example strategies that violate our terms of use:
Cross-Account Manipulation
Hedging
Simultaneous opposite positions on the same asset — whether in the same account or across your own accounts.
Example: Buying EURUSD + simultaneously selling EURUSD in the same or a second account.
Inverse Trading Prohibition
Opposite positions on the same asset across different accounts within a short time — including between different individuals.
Example: Trader A buys GBPUSD, Trader B sells GBPUSD at the same time to neutralize market risk.
May lead to account suspension upon the first occurrence.
Copy Trading
Copying or replicating trades or trade ideas between accounts belonging to different individuals is not permitted. This applies to both manual and automated execution as well as signals or related third-party services.
Exception: Trade copier software may be used exclusively to copy and execute trades between accounts belonging to the same individual. Once trades are copied or executed between accounts belonging to different individuals, this is considered prohibited Copy Trading.
Example: A signal service provides entry/exit signals that another trader executes.
Account Sharing & Device Sharing
Sharing account access or using the same device by multiple people for different Pinex accounts.
Example: A friend logs in to place trades. Multiple people use the same VPS.
Risky & Unfair Trading
All-or-Nothing & Excessive Risk
Trading where a single trade can endanger the account, or systematic operation close to the loss limit.
Examples: Position size where a normal stop-loss wipes out the account. “Last attempt” trades near max drawdown.
Martingale & Recovery Systems
Increasing position size after losses to “recover” them.
Examples: Doubling lot size after each stop-loss. Grid/recovery systems with progressive volume increase.
Grid Trading
A grid of buy/sell orders above and below the current price with many simultaneously open positions.
Example: Multiple buy limits at fixed intervals below the market with continuous averaging down as price falls.
One-Sided Bets & Position Limits
Within the same trade idea, meaning the same market and the same trading direction, a maximum of two positions may be open at the same time.
Opening or holding three or more positions simultaneously within the same trade idea constitutes a rule violation and is classified as a Hard Breach.
Why is this not allowed? One-sided bets and uncontrolled scaling can be used to indirectly bypass risk rules or create an “all-or-nothing” risk profile. This distorts the evaluation results and does not reflect sustainable, professional trading.
Tip: For multiple take-profits, use partial take profits (partial closes) in TradeLocker/Metatrader 5 instead of opening new positions.
Here it is shown how to do it: → TradeLocker Guide
Maximum Margin Usage
Maximum margin usage refers to the combined margin used by all positions that are open at the same time within a trading account.
Margin usage must not reach or exceed 80%.
Margin usage of 80% or more constitutes a rule violation and is classified as a Hard Breach.
Examples: Multiple simultaneously open positions result in a margin usage of around 80% of the account balance.
Excessive Notional Exposure Without Stop-Loss (Abuse of the Simulated Environment)
Within a 24-hour window, holding positions whose total nominal volume (notional value) exceeds 10× the initial account balance, where more than 50% of the trades placed in that window have no stop-loss set.
Example: Within a 24-hour period, an account with an initial balance of USD 10,000 holds positions with a combined nominal volume of more than USD 100,000, and more than half of the trades placed in that window have no stop-loss in place.
Why is this not allowed? Combining oversized notional exposure with a majority of trades left without a stop-loss in the same 24-hour window creates an uncontrolled, all-or-nothing risk profile. It bypasses proper risk management and does not reflect sustainable, professional trading. The combination of both factors — exposure above the 10x threshold and more than 50% of trades without a Stop-Loss — is classified as Abuse of the Simulated Environment and constitutes a Hard Breach.
Gambling Behavior & Hyperactivity
Pinex Capital prohibits gambling-like trading and excessive activity that is not based on a reproducible, professional strategy.
Gambling-like trading occurs especially when trades are executed without a clear setup/structured risk management or when a noticeably high proportion of trades are held for extremely short durations.
Hyperactivity describes an unusually high number of trades or order actions within a short period of time.
Important: Behavior patterns characterized by extremely short holding times and/or very high order activity may additionally be classified as Quick Strike/HFT (see section “Quick Strike, High-Frequency Trading (HFT) & Tick-based Exploitation”).
The evaluation is not based solely on a single metric, but on overall behavior.
Excessively Risky Trading (General Clause)
Pinex Capital reserves the right to classify any trading style as excessively risky, even if none of the above-mentioned rules are individually violated. The evaluation is based on overall behavior, position structure, and risk management. In such cases, the account may be closed and a refund may be issued.
Technical Exploitation
Quick Strike / HFT / Tick-based Exploitation
Extremely short holding times, mass placing/modifying/deleting of orders, or automated systems targeting minimal price movements.
Examples: Opening/closing positions within seconds. Excessive SL/TP modifications at high frequency.
Arbitrage
Exploiting price differences, delays, or technical discrepancies between feeds/platforms/execution.
Example: Simultaneous buying/selling on two platforms due to price differences. Latency arbitrage bots.
Exploit / Latency Abuse
Exploiting pricing errors, execution delays, or platform issues.
Gap Trading
Gap trading is not permitted. This includes any attempt to exploit price gaps around market opens or closes.
Trades opened within 2 hours before market close and/or within 2 hours after market open may be deemed gap trades and treated as prohibited activity.
Example: A position is opened shortly before market close in order to profit from the price gap at the next market open.
Evaluation Gaming
Account Rolling
Systematic purchase of multiple challenge accounts to pass through volume and probability rather than actual skill.
Example: Repeated account purchases after breaches using the same aggressive approach.
Strategy Consistency
The trading strategy must remain consistent across both the evaluation and Pinex Trader Account phases. A fundamental change after passing is not allowed.
Example: Defensive during evaluation, highly leveraged/aggressive in the Pinex Trader Account phase.
Expert Advisors & Tools
EAs and tools marketed for passing evaluations are prohibited.
The use of Expert Advisors, automated trading systems and software that automatically opens, closes or manages trades is not permitted.
The only exception is trade copier software used exclusively to copy and execute trades between accounts belonging to the same individual.
PineX Capital may request access to the source code.
Compliance & Market Integrity
Prohibited are:
Insider trading — use of non-public information
Front-running — placing trades in advance based on upcoming orders or internal information (→ immediate account closure)
Broker/LP risk — trading that triggers cancellations, compliance flags, or liquidity issues
PineX Capital reserves the right to review violations of these rules and take appropriate action. The specific action taken depends on the type and severity of the violation as well as the circumstances.
Within the framework of these rules, Pinex Capital decides at its own discretion, after review, whether a violation has occurred and which measures are appropriate in each individual case.
Even if individual rules are formally followed, an account may still be classified as abusive, not market-compliant, or not sustainable if the overall pattern indicates that evaluation mechanisms, risk rules, or the simulated environment are being deliberately bypassed or exploited.
In such or similar cases, Pinex Capital reserves the right to take appropriate measures.
Pinex Capital also reserves the right to determine the consequences of rule violations at its own discretion. Depending on the type, severity, frequency, and overall context of the violation, Pinex Capital may take appropriate measures. These may include warnings, restrictions, account suspension, account termination, rejection of a simulated Pinex Trader Account, confiscation of rewards, loss of paid fees, and exclusion from further programs.
Note on examples and interpretation of the rules
All examples mentioned in this document are for illustrative purposes only and are not exhaustive.
The absence of a specific example or the non-mention of a particular trading behavior does not mean that it is permitted.
Payout requests may be reviewed, postponed, or rejected until the review is completed.
Behaviors that are functionally, structurally, or economically comparable to the described examples may also be classified as rule violations or abuse.
Measures in case of rule violations or abusive behavior
Depending on the type, severity, frequency, and overall context of a violation or suspicious trading pattern, Pinex Capital may take the following measures:
Warning or notice
Temporary trading restriction
Rejection or delay of a reward payment
Confiscation of rewards
Account suspension or termination
Exclusion from further programs
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