FTMO News Slippage: Your Stop Just Filled 90 Pips Past the Level
On October 2 a trader posted that his FTMO stop loss filled 90 pips past the level he set, right on a red-folder release. Same trade on FundingPips had never slipped him more than 30. Same trade on FundedNext slipped 12. The fills differ because the firms share a market that briefly stops being a market, and the difference between a planned loss and a real one is exactly that gap.
Key Takeaways
- A stop loss is a pending order that fires a market order. At a red-folder release that market order fills at whatever price still exists, which can be 90 pips from your line.
- FTMO restricts any execution, stops included, for 2 minutes either side of selected releases on funded Standard accounts. The slippage itself happens in every phase, on every firm.
- Funded-account windows are policy, not physics: FundingPips deducts news-window profits at plus or minus 5 minutes and hard-breaches Zero accounts at 10, FundedNext counts 40 percent of news-window profit and all of the losses.
- Six gold inflation mornings measured $11.61 to $67.77 of range in the first 15 minutes. A $9 stop sits inside that noise by construction.
- Size event trades off the worst fill: a $500-risk position that fills 4.5 times worse loses $2,250, nearly half of a $5,000 daily allowance.
The Fill That Started This
The thread went up on r/FOREXTRADING on October 2 under the title "FTMO news slippage being 100 pips today?" The poster, on his first FTMO account, described a stop loss dragged 90 pips past where he set it by a red-folder release. His words: "the red news folder pushed my SL 90 pips over what it originally was, that's actually insane." The 100 in the title and the 90 in the post are the same event; read the body for the number.
The comparison is what makes the thread worth your time. On FundingPips, he said, a news slippage had never cost him more than 30 pips. He put the identical trade on FundedNext that morning and got filled 12 pips past. Three firms, one news event, one stop, three fills. That spread is the whole story of simulated-prop execution.
One caution before the pile-on: we do not know his account phase, instrument or size, and a single screenshot is not an execution audit. What we do know is that none of it is unusual. A FundingPips funded account was breached in February on a single 100-pip fill with the trader holding his 3 percent risk rule, and an r/FOREXTRADING thread from this month is a trader shopping for a new MT5 broker specifically on news-spread and stop-fill quality after a bad CPI fill. When slippage alone can end an account, fill quality stops being a nitpick.
Why Red-Folder Fills Slip
FTMO runs what it calls a real-market execution model. Your order is replicated out to liquidity providers and filled at the best price available when it arrives, which is also how live brokers work. Their infrastructure FAQ is direct about it: no hidden markups, no added slippage, and fills that slip in both directions without preference. Nobody in that chain pads your stop; the liquidity near your level at 8:30:00 is simply gone.
A stop loss, as FTMO's own tips page puts it, is a pending order that triggers a market order. Market orders take the best price on the book at the moment they land. Half a second after a CPI print, the quotes near your level have been pulled, the spread is wide, and whatever size remains sits far from your price. The market order fills at the next quote that actually exists, and that is your 90 pips.
Spread alone can trip the stop before price ever prints on your chart. FundingPips' mechanics doc spells out the detail most traders miss: a sell stop triggers on the ask, and when the spread blows out at news, the ask can spike through your line while the bid chart you are watching never touches it. Their doc also flags the 5:00 PM ET rollover, when spreads read massively for a minute. It is the same mechanics in a quieter hour, and it catches traders who place stops at exact limit levels.
The print needs surprisingly little room. A measurement posted on r/Forex in October 2026 tracked the first 15 minutes after six US inflation mornings on the gold 5-minute chart. The ranges ran from $11.61 to $67.77. Six NFP mornings ran $5.73 to $48.48. A 90-pip gold stop is $9.00 an ounce of distance, and the mildest morning on that list traveled further than that before the first quarter hour was out.
The Window Rules, Firm by Firm
Slippage is physics. What firms add on top is policy, and the policies differ enough to change how you trade the morning. I pulled these from firm help centers in October 2026; check your own dashboard before a release, because these rules move without ceremony.
| Firm and stage | The window | If a trade touches it |
|---|---|---|
| FTMO funded (Standard) | Any execution restricted 2 min before and 2 min after selected releases, stop losses, take profits and pending orders named explicitly. Affected symbols include USD pairs, gold, US indices and DXY. | Violation may terminate the account. Holding is allowed if the position was opened more than 2 min before the event. |
| FTMO Challenge / Verification, Swing accounts | No news restriction. USD events still restrict nothing in these phases. | Slippage applies, policy does not. |
| FundingPips master (Flex / Standard / Pro) | 5 min either side of restricted news on the affected currency. Trades opened 5+ hours earlier are exempt (the 5-hour rule). | Soft breach: profits from trades opened or closed inside the window are deducted, account survives. |
| FundingPips Zero | 10 min either side, opening, closing or holding. | Hard breach, account closed. |
| FundedNext funded (Stellar 1-Step / 2-Step / Lite) | 5 min either side of listed high-impact events, market executions and pending orders including SL and TP. | Only 40 percent of the profit from those trades counts at payout. Losses count 100 percent. Partial closes taint the whole order. |
| FundedNext Challenge | News trading allowed freely. | Reward share does not apply in the challenge phase. |
The FTMO funded row hides the sharpest trap in the table. Holding through NFP is allowed on a funded Standard account if you opened more than 2 minutes before the release. But the restriction covers any execution, and the FAQ lists stop losses by name. So if price blows through your stop inside the window and the stop fills, the fill itself violates the rule. The order that was protecting you becomes the breach. It is worth reading twice, because it inverts the instinct: on a funded FTMO account you do not hold a tight-stopped position through a red-folder release. You are flat across the window, or you are in a position so far from your level that the window cannot reach it.
FundingPips' version is softer but not free: news-window trades on a master account keep the account but surrender the profit, and their docs warn that a profit deduction can itself push equity through a loss limit. FundedNext's version flips the asymmetry the other way, 40 percent of the upside and all of the downside, which is a trade no one would take on its own terms. Their help center puts gap fills entirely on the trader, calling market gaps a natural part of real market conditions with no adjustments available. The fill is your problem to survive.
What 90 Pips Costs
Pip values make this slippery to eyeball, so here is the translation. On a USD major, 90 pips is $900 per standard lot. On gold, where a pip is commonly $0.10, 90 pips is $9.00 an ounce, which on a 100-ounce lot is also $900. The 12-pip fill on FundedNext costs $120 a lot by the same arithmetic. The firm you choose changed the price of the same mistake by more than seven times.
Now size it the way the rules encourage. A $100,000 FTMO account has a $5,000 daily loss allowance. You risk a disciplined half percent, $500, with a 20-pip stop on a major. That stop distance supports 2.5 lots, $25 a pip. Filled 90 pips away, the loss is $2,250: 4.5 times the plan, 45 percent of the daily allowance, from one trade that your journal records as a perfectly normal half-percent risk.
Gold at spot near $4,180 makes the same trade. A $2.00 stop on 2.5 lots plans $500 of risk. A $9.00 slip delivers $2,250 of loss, and the r/Forex ranges say a $9 slip is not a tail event on a CPI morning. It is inside the first minutes of ordinary behavior on six out of six mornings measured.
This is also why FTMO's tips page tells you never to park your stop exactly at the daily loss limit, and to fold commission, swap and slippage into the math before you size. The trader who sets the SL at minus $5,000 exactly has planned a breach the first time the fill disappoints.
Sizing for the Fill You Get
The fix is an honest denominator rather than a better stop. Divide your dollar risk by the worst fill you will accept, not by your stop distance. Want $500 of risk on gold through CPI with a $9 slip tolerated: $500 divided by $9 is about 55 ounces, roughly 0.55 lots. The $2.00 stop would have allowed 2.5 lots. Event mornings are small-size mornings by arithmetic, before psychology enters the room.
Place stops outside the measured noise or do not hold the print. If the strategy needs a $9 gold stop, it is a pre-news or post-news strategy, and pretending otherwise just donates the spread. Time stops work too: flat two minutes before, reassess after the first 15-minute range prints, then trade the direction with fresh levels that the market has actually acknowledged.
Respect the windows as written, because on funded accounts they bind harder than the slippage does. FTMO funded Standard: flat across the 2-minute window, which also removes the stop-execution trap entirely. FundingPips master: the 5-minute deduction zone and the 5-hour rule mean early entries are treated as convictions, news scalps are not paid. FundedNext funded: a news scalp that keeps 40 percent of its profit while owing all of its losses is a declining trade. Skip it. And FundingPips Zero simply ends accounts at 10 minutes, so there is no version of holding through the print there.
Shop execution the way that October 2 poster did, by running the same trade on more than one firm and comparing fills. One thread proves nothing, but it is the correct method, and it is now a real selection criterion: the r/FOREXTRADING broker-shopping thread this month is traders comparing Axi, Pu Prime and Pepperstone specifically on news spread and stop fills. Before you buy a challenge, ask support three questions: how are stops filled at the US open, what spread should I expect on gold and EURUSD at CPI, and what evidence do you want if a fill looks abnormal. FundedNext reviews abnormal fills on timestamped evidence, so keep the screenshots.
Finally, keep your own guard well inside the firm's. Eighty percent of the daily cap is a working number: on the $100,000 FTMO account that is -$4,000, which leaves $1,000 of slack for exactly one ugly fill on a day you sized honestly. The firm's engine closes you after the breach; the guard is the only thing that acts before it.
Stops sized for the fill you get
ChartWise computes position size from your risk and the stop that actually sits on the chart, and its equity guard holds the daily cap at your buffer instead of the firm's floor. On MT4 & MT5, across every account in your stack.
Get Early Access →Frequently Asked Questions
Why did my stop loss fill 90 pips past my level on FTMO?
Because a stop loss is a pending order that triggers a market order, and at a red-folder release the next available price was 90 pips from your level. FTMO runs a real-market execution model: the order is matched against liquidity provider quotes when it lands, and around CPI or NFP the book near your price is empty. FTMO states it adds no markup and that slippage runs in both directions without preference.
Can my stop loss execute during the FTMO news window on a funded account?
Technically it can, and that is the trap. On a funded Standard account, any execution inside the 2 minutes before and after a restricted release counts as a violation, and the FAQ names stop losses and take profits explicitly. Holding a position through the window is allowed if it was opened more than 2 minutes before the event, but a stop that fires inside the window risks the account. Be flat across the window or be in a position that cannot reach your level inside it.
Which prop firm has the least news slippage?
Nobody publishes a slippage cap, so compare fills on the same trade the way the October 2 poster did: roughly 90 pips on FTMO, 30 on FundingPips, 12 on FundedNext by his account. One thread is not a benchmark, but same-trade comparisons across two or three firms beat any marketing page. Ask specifically about stop fills and spread at the US open before you buy a challenge.
How wide do gold ranges get after CPI or NFP?
A measurement posted on r/Forex in October 2026 tracked six US inflation mornings on the gold 5-minute chart: first-15-minute ranges ran from $11.61 to $67.77. Six NFP mornings ran $5.73 to $48.48. A stop 90 pips from entry on gold is $9.00 an ounce away, inside the first minute or two of that noise.
How do I size a trade so slippage cannot breach my daily loss?
Size to the worst fill, not the planned one. Divide your dollar risk by the worst slippage you will accept, not by your stop distance: $500 of risk against a $9.00 gold slip caps the position at about 0.55 lots, not the 2.5 lots a $2.00 stop allows. Then keep your own guard at 80 percent of the daily cap so one ugly fill cannot end the account.
The Short Version
- An FTMO stop filled 90 pips past its level on an October 2 red-folder release; the same trade measured 30 pips on FundingPips and 12 on FundedNext by the poster's account.
- Stops are pending orders that fire market orders, and at the print the market order takes whatever price exists. Six gold inflation mornings ranged $11.61 to $67.77 in the first 15 minutes.
- FTMO funded Standard accounts restrict any execution, stops included, 2 minutes either side of selected releases. The stop that fills inside the window is itself the violation.
- FundingPips deducts master-account profits inside 5-minute windows and breaches Zero accounts at 10. FundedNext pays 40 percent of news-window profit and 100 percent of its losses.
- Divide risk by the worst fill, not the stop distance: $500 of risk against a $9 gold slip is about 0.55 lots, and a guard at 80 percent of the daily cap absorbs the fill the plan did not predict.