Key points
- Futures plans commonly prohibit overnight holding; Forex plans commonly allow it.
- Enforcement is usually automatic — positions are closed at a stated time, not merely disallowed.
- Weekend holding is a separate rule from overnight holding, and can differ within one firm.
- The rule frequently changes between the evaluation and the funded account.
Why the rule exists
A position held through a close carries gap risk: the market can reopen away from where it stopped, past any stop-loss. The firm carries that risk, not the trader, so firms that want to avoid it close positions before the gap can happen.
That is why the rule is usually enforced rather than merely stated. A prohibition on overnight holding is normally implemented as an automatic flatten at a published time, so compliance is not left to the trader's diligence.
Futures: usually prohibited, usually automatic
Most futures evaluation plans require positions to be closed before the daily session ends. Several publish a hard time and flatten anything still open at it.
Because the exchange session already defines a natural boundary, the rule is easy to state and easy to enforce. It also means weekend holding is often not a separate question on futures plans: if positions cannot survive a nightly close, they cannot reach Friday's either. Rex records weekend holding as not applicable on futures variants for exactly that reason, rather than recording it as prohibited.
Forex and CFD: usually allowed, with exceptions
Forex and CFD plans commonly allow both overnight and weekend holding, and several firms advertise it as a feature. But the permission is published per plan and per phase, and firms that allow it on one product frequently restrict it on another.
One firm in the current record publishes exactly that split: its Prime and Prime X accounts allow trading and holding around the clock including weekends, while its funded accounts under a different model prohibit weekend holding entirely and close anything still open at a stated Friday time, treating a violation as a hard breach.
So "the firm allows weekend holding" is rarely a fact about a firm. It is a fact about a plan and a phase.
The cost side: swaps and financing
Where overnight holding is allowed, it is not usually free. Forex and CFD accounts accrue a financing charge or credit for positions held past the rollover, and on a simulated account those are typically modelled just as they would be on a live one.
Two consequences follow. A swing strategy is paying a running cost that a day strategy is not, and that cost counts against your profit target and your drawdown. And a triple-swap day — commonly Wednesday — makes one night materially more expensive than the others.
Some firms offer swap-free variants. Where they do, it is published as a plan feature or an add-on, and it is worth confirming whether it applies to the evaluation, the funded account or both.
How it interacts with the other limits
- Daily loss: a position carried across the reset brings its unrealised loss into the new day's allowance if the plan measures equity.
- Trailing drawdown: on an intraday-measured plan, floating profit on an overnight position can raise the floor before you ever bank it.
- News: a position held into a scheduled release can breach a news rule through a stop fill, without any action from you.
- Automatic flatten: on plans that close positions for you, the resulting realised loss counts normally against every limit.
Holding rules are therefore not an isolated preference. On a plan with intraday trailing and an equity-based daily loss, holding overnight changes how two other limits behave.
Checking a plan
- Check overnight and weekend separatelyThey are different rules and a firm can allow one and prohibit the other.
- Find the enforcementAutomatic flatten at a stated time, or a rule breach after the fact. The first is a trading constraint, the second is an account risk.
- Check the phaseEvaluation and funded accounts frequently differ, and the funded rule is usually in a separate document.
- Check the financingSwap charges, triple-swap days, and whether a swap-free variant exists.
Rex shows overnight holding and weekend holding as separate rows on every challenge page, each with its own source and its own state where a firm has not published it.
Common questions
Why does Rex mark weekend holding "not applicable" on futures plans?
Because those plans already require positions to be closed at the daily session end, so a weekend rule does not arise. That is different from prohibiting it, and Rex keeps the two apart.
If the firm closes my position automatically, is that a breach?
Usually not — an automatic flatten is the enforcement, not a violation. Where a firm treats a position left open as a breach in itself, it says so explicitly.
Do swap charges count against my drawdown?
They affect the account balance, so yes, they count against limits measured on balance or equity, exactly like any other cost.
Can I hold through a weekend on an evaluation but not once funded?
Yes, and that pattern is published by more than one firm. Read the funded-account terms as well as the challenge page.
Compare the options this guide mentions
Opens 3 challenge options side by side, with every field that cannot honestly be compared marked rather than averaged.