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Rewriting a prop firm's rules on one page in your own words

Prop firm rule pages are long, spread across FAQs and help articles, and often updated without much notice. Most traders read them once before buying and then rely on memory.

A better habit is to rewrite the rules that affect your trading on a single page, in plain language, before the first trade.

Not every rule. Just the ones that can end the account or block a payout. Daily loss limit and how it's calculated, balance or equity, and at what time it resets. Maximum drawdown and whether it trails. Profit target. Minimum trading days and what counts as a trading day. News restrictions, with the exact window in minutes. Weekend and overnight holding rules. Lot caps. Consistency rules. Any banned strategies that are close to what you do.

Writing them in your own words forces you to understand each one. If you can't explain a rule simply, you probably don't understand it well enough to trade near it, and that's the moment to ask support.

Date the page and note where each rule came from, with a link. When the firm updates its terms, you'll know what to recheck.

Keep the page next to your trading plan. Read it at the start of each week. It takes two minutes and catches a lot of the small misunderstandings that lead to breaches.

Rewriting the rules on one page is excellent advice. A useful addition: write down the time of each rule in your own time zone. Daily loss resets, news windows and weekend holding rules all depend on the firm's server time, which may not be the same as yours. A London trader on a server running GMT plus two may find the daily reset happens at 22:00 London. Having that written in plain language next to the rule prevents a lot of accidental breaches.

Adding numbers in money terms next to percentage rules makes them easier to apply in the moment. A five percent daily loss limit on a particular account size is a specific amount, and that amount is what you'll actually be looking at on the platform. Writing both makes it faster to see how close you are during a session. If the daily limit is calculated from the starting balance of each day, the money figure changes every day and needs updating, which is another reason to look at the page each morning rather than once per week. Rounding the money figure down slightly gives a small safety margin without making the number hard to use.

Different firms phrase the same rule in very different ways, and the differences can matter. One firm's daily loss limit includes floating losses on open trades, another only counts closed trades. One measures maximum drawdown from the initial balance, another from the highest equity point. When you trade at more than one firm, having a one page summary for each in the same format makes these differences visible side by side. That's much easier than flipping between two websites and trying to remember which firm uses which method. Use the same headings in the same order on each page, so the eye finds the daily limit in the same spot whichever firm you're looking at. That also makes it quick to spot when two firms differ, since a different answer under the same heading stands out right away.

Some rules only show up in the terms and conditions, not on the main rules page. Things like restrictions on trading from certain countries, VPN use, or account sharing. These can void an account just as easily as a drawdown breach. It's tedious, but skimming the full terms for anything about IP addresses, devices, copying and third party tools is part of building the page properly. If something there is unclear, the same approach applies: ask support and keep the written answer with your summary page. Rules about third party tools often cover trade copiers and EAs bought from a marketplace, both of which are common among scalpers.

A short section at the bottom for "things I'm not sure about" is useful. Rather than guessing, list the questions and send them to support in one message. When the answers come back, move them into the main section with the date. Over time this builds into a reliable reference that's specific to how you trade, which is more useful than the firm's general FAQ. It's also something you can share with other traders at the same firm, which helps everyone avoid the same misunderstandings. If the firm changes a rule, update the page right away and note the date of the change, so you always know which version you're working from. A firm that changes rules often is also something to note in itself, since it means checking the page more frequently and being more careful about relying on any single interpretation of the terms.