News windows and copying
A copier multiplies whatever you do, including mistakes of timing. If your firm requires you to be flat around a scheduled release and your leader account takes one trade inside that window, every follower in the group takes it too. One trade, N simultaneous breaches. This is the single sharpest edge of copying on prop accounts.
The kinds of news rules firms use
News rules vary more than almost any other prop-firm rule, and firms revise them often. Your firm's own rules say which of these apply to you:
- No restriction. Some firms publish no news rule at all, on any tier.
- No blackout, but limits on how you trade a release. For example: one direction only during the event, no resting orders on both sides to "catch the move", no chasing, or no entering with your full maximum position size into a major release.
- Hard flat windows. You must be flat, often including working orders, from a minute or two before to a minute or two after Tier-1 events such as FOMC, the Employment Report (NFP) and CPI, sometimes plus instrument-specific releases: crude inventories for crude oil, bond auctions for Treasury futures, crop reports for agricultural contracts.
- Different rules per tier. Many firms treat evaluations and funded accounts differently. A release that is unrestricted in an evaluation can be a hard breach on a funded account.
Two details deserve emphasis. First, where a flat window applies, "flat" often includes working orders: a resting limit sitting through the window breaches even if it never fills. Second, a one-direction-only rule interacts safely with copying: every follower takes the same side as its leader, so all your copied accounts are same-direction by construction.
The routine before a release
- Check the calendar. The Economic Calendar page shows the week's releases with impact filters, in your timezone or Chicago time.
- Know each follower's rule: the strictest wins. If one follower sits at a firm with a flat-window, the whole group plans around that window.
- Pause before the window. Use Pause all on the Trade Desk (above your positions while copying runs), or stop the group's copying entirely. Paused followers ignore new leader fills.
- Verify flat where flat is required. Close positions and cancel resting orders on the restricted accounts. A working order is enough to breach at some firms.
- Resume after. Press Resume all (the same button) once the window has passed and you have checked positions match.
If there are instruments you never want copied around their own release cycles (CL into EIA inventories, ZN into auctions), the instrument block-list removes them from copying entirely.
Quick answers
Does MirrorFill pause copying around news automatically?
No. The Economic Calendar shows you the schedule, and Pause all is one click, but the decision and the timing are yours.
My follower's firm has a news window but my leader's firm doesn't. What happens?
The leader trades legally; the follower breaches. Group rules follow the strictest member: pause the restricted follower, or the whole group, before the window.
Is a resting order really a breach?
At firms whose windows require no working orders, yes: not just no positions. Cancel resting orders, don't just go flat.