I Forgot to Close My Prop Firm Position — Now What?

It's 4:15 PM Eastern. You check your phone and feel your stomach drop. You had a position open on your funded account — and the market closed 20 minutes ago.

You log into Tradovate and see exactly what you were afraid of: your prop firm has flagged an overnight position violation. Your funded account — the one you spent weeks evaluating for, the one that was finally profitable — is terminated.

If this just happened to you, take a breath. You're not alone. Overnight position violations are one of the most common reasons prop firm traders lose their funded accounts, and almost every experienced futures trader has this story.

Here's what you need to know right now, what your options are, and how to make sure it never happens again.

What Just Happened to Your Account

When a prop firm says you must be “flat by close,” they mean zero open positions — no longs, no shorts, no working orders — before the session ends. The exact cutoff depends on your firm and your platform:

• Tradovate's platform cutoff: 15:45 ET — Tradovate itself may auto-liquidate positions after this time, but you shouldn't rely on this as your safety net
• Most prop firms' rule: Positions must be flat by 15:55 ET at the latest
• CME futures session close: 16:00 ET

If you had any open position past your firm's cutoff — even one MNQ micro contract, even if it was in profit — that's a violation.

Most prop firms treat overnight violations as an automatic termination. Not a warning. Not a strike. Your funded account is closed, and the profits you'd accumulated are typically forfeited.

The reason is simple from the firm's perspective: overnight gaps in futures can be massive and unpredictable. A single overnight hold on a leveraged futures position could blow through the account's drawdown limit before the next session opens. The risk to the firm is too large to tolerate, so the rule is enforced with zero exceptions.

Can You Appeal an Overnight Violation?

Honestly? Rarely, and it depends on the firm.

Some prop firms have a support process where you can explain the circumstances. If it was clearly a platform issue — Tradovate had an outage, their API was unresponsive, the server lagged — you may have a case. Document everything: screenshots, timestamps, any error messages.

But if the reason is “I forgot,” “I fell asleep,” “I was away from my desk,” or “I thought I had more time” — most firms won't reverse the termination. The rule exists precisely because these situations are common, and making exceptions would undermine the entire risk framework.

Here's the reality check for each firm:

• Apex Trader Funding — Generally strict on overnight violations. You can contact support, but reversals for user error are uncommon. The good news: Apex frequently runs promotions on new evaluations, so getting back in is at least affordable.
• Topstep — Has a support team that reviews violations case by case, but the standard outcome for a clear overnight hold is account termination.
• Take Profit Trader — Known for responsive support. Worth reaching out, especially if there were extenuating circumstances, but don't count on a reversal for a straightforward forgot-to-close situation.
• Tradeify, My Funded Futures, Lucid Trading, Elite Trader Funding, TradeDay — Policies vary, but the industry standard is firm on overnight violations. Check your specific firm's terms of service for their appeal process.

The Financial Cost of an Overnight Violation

Let's do the math on what this mistake actually costs:

For a trader running a $150K funded account who had $3,000 in accumulated profits, a single overnight violation costs roughly:

• $3,000 in forfeited profits
• $250 for a new evaluation
• $150 activation fee
• 2–4 weeks of re-evaluation time
• Total: ~$3,400 plus weeks of lost earning potential

Compare that to the cost of an automated position protection service — typically $29/month or less. The math speaks for itself.

Why This Keeps Happening

You'd think that after hearing enough horror stories, every prop firm trader would set alarms, post sticky notes on their monitors, and never miss another close. But it keeps happening because the failure modes are more varied than simple forgetfulness:

The common thread: these are all human problems. They happen to disciplined, experienced traders. They happen once, and once is all it takes.

How to Make Sure This Never Happens Again

There's a spectrum of solutions, from basic to bulletproof.

Level 1: Alarms and Reminders

Set multiple alarms:

• 15:15 ET — “Check positions, start planning exits”
• 15:30 ET — “Close all positions NOW”
• 15:40 ET — “FINAL CHECK — must be flat”

This is better than nothing, but it fails when you're away from your phone, when you silence the alarm because you're “about to close it,” or when any of the scenarios above occur.

Reliability: ~70%. Better than nothing, but you're still one bad day away from a violation.

Level 2: Broker Alerts and Platform Tools

Tradovate and NinjaTrader both offer some built-in tools:

• Tradovate's auto-liquidation kicks in near session end, but the timing isn't precise enough to guarantee prop firm compliance
• NinjaTrader's ATM strategies can include time-based exits

These help, but they're not designed specifically for prop firm rules, and they depend on your platform being open and connected.

Reliability: ~80%. Covers most scenarios but still has gaps.

Level 3: Automated Position Protection (FlatGuard)

Purpose-built position protection systems run on external servers — completely independent from your trading platform, your computer, and your internet connection. They monitor your broker account via API and will force-flatten any open position before your prop firm's cutoff time.

The best implementations use multiple failsafe layers:

• Soft close (e.g., 15:30 ET): Attempts to close positions gracefully, respecting any profit targets that are close to being hit
• Hard close (e.g., 15:40 ET): Immediately market-closes all open positions, no exceptions
• Nuclear failsafe (e.g., 15:44 ET): A completely separate system on different infrastructure that fires if the primary system hasn't confirmed a flat account

For your account to suffer an overnight violation with this kind of system in place, three independent systems running on separate servers would all need to fail at the same time. The probability is effectively zero.

This is the only approach that covers every failure mode: forgetting, distractions, internet outages, power failures, emergencies, time zone confusion, and late fills.

Reliability: ~99.9%. The only solution that removes human error from the equation entirely.

Level 4: Combine Everything

The most disciplined traders stack all three levels: personal alarms as a first-line reminder, platform tools as a secondary check, and automated position protection as the guaranteed backstop. This way, the automated system almost never needs to fire — your own habits close positions 95% of the time. But on that one day when life gets in the way, the system catches you.

Getting Back on Your Feet

If you've already lost an account, here's your action plan:

Today:

1. Document what happened — screenshot the violation notice, note the time, write down what went wrong
2. Check if your firm has an appeal process and submit one if there were legitimate technical issues
3. Give yourself permission to be frustrated, but don't let it spiral

This week:

4. Evaluate new account options — many firms offer discounts on re-evaluations, and running multiple evaluations simultaneously improves your odds
5. Set up automated position protection before you start trading your next funded account
6. Review your daily routine — what specific change would have prevented this?

Going forward:

7. Never trade a funded account without automated position protection running
8. Start each trading day by confirming your protection system is active
9. End each trading day by verifying you're flat — even with automation, the habit matters

The Bottom Line

Losing a funded account to an overnight violation feels terrible. But it's also one of the most preventable mistakes in prop firm trading. The technology exists to guarantee it never happens — for less than the cost of a single losing trade.

Every day you trade a funded account without automated position protection is a day you're risking thousands of dollars on your ability to remember to click a button at the right time. That's not a risk-management strategy. That's a hope-and-prayer strategy.

If you're also looking to automate your trade entries and exits alongside position protection, learn how automated futures trading signals work for prop firm accounts.

Set up the protection. Move on. And never write this search query again.

Frequently Asked Questions