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Many funded programmes either ban weekend holding outright or allow it only on certain account types. The reason is simple: the firm cannot hedge a Sunday gap, and gap risk is precisely what a small drawdown limit cannot absorb.

Points worth checking in the rulebook:

• Cut-off time. Some firms define "weekend" from Friday 21:00 UTC, others from the last tradable minute of the broker feed. Positions still open a few seconds late can be force-closed at a poor price.
• Whether pending orders count. A limit order left over the weekend that fills on the Sunday open can be treated as a violation.
• Whether crypto CFDs, which trade at weekends, are exempt.
• What happens on a breach: soft breach (position closed, account continues) or hard breach (account failed).

For scalpers this is mostly an admin issue: set a Friday alarm and a "flat by" time well before the cut-off. For swing traders it is a strategy issue, and the swing account variants usually come with lower leverage for that reason.

Do you keep a fixed Friday routine for flattening, or does your firm allow weekend holds?

The cut-off definition is where I've seen people get caught, mostly around the clock changes. A firm that writes Friday 21:00 UTC is matching the New York 17:00 close in summer, but in winter the real close moves to 22:00 UTC while the rule stays put.

So for most of the year your last hour of feed is tradable, and from November it quietly isn't. The platform still shows live prices, which makes it easy to think you have time.

Europe and the US also change clocks on different weekends, so there's a week or two where server time, UTC and the rulebook all disagree. I just treat 19:00 UTC as flat by, all year, and stop thinking about it.

Pending orders are the other trap. I cancel everything at the same time I flatten, including anything an EA left working, because an orphaned limit filled on a Sunday open for a friend of mine and the firm counted it as a weekend hold.

Holiday Fridays deserve their own line too. Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve often close early, and a 21:00 cut-off means little if liquidity left hours before.

Does anyone know a firm that treats a pending order filling on the Sunday open as a soft breach rather than a hard one?