YRM Prop Weekend Holding Rules 2026

YRM Prop bans weekend holding across all positions without exception — every contract must be closed before Friday 4:15 PM EST, and markets don't reopen until Sunday 6:00 PM EST, creating a mandatory 50+ hour flat period that kills traditional swing trading but protects the firm (and honestly, you) from the catastrophic gap risk that makes weekend futures positions a coin flip.

This isn't some arbitrary restriction to annoy you — it's existential for a prop firm operating in simulated environments where weekend gaps can't be accurately modeled, stop-losses don't execute, and a single geopolitical event could gap ES down 200 points while you're sleeping Saturday night.

Look, I get it. Weekend holding is standard practice if you're trading your own capital through a normal broker. You enter Wednesday, hold through the weekend, exit Monday — totally normal for swing traders. But prop firms aren't normal brokers, and YRM Prop's simulated capital means they're not willing to accept unpredictable weekend scenarios that could blow their risk models. And honestly? Once you've experienced getting smoked by a weekend gap (and you will if you trade long enough), you'll understand why this rule actually protects your profitability.

The weekend holding ban connects directly to the overnight position rules that allow weekday holding but require daily flatten, the trading hours structure that defines when you can and can't trade, and the broader prohibited strategies framework that exists to prevent catastrophic losses from uncontrollable events.

Why I trade with YRM Prop: I’ve tested YRM Prop accounts personally, analyzed their rule structure, and examined how their evaluation model works in real trading conditions. This breakdown is based on hands-on experience and direct platform testing — not recycled marketing copy.

That said, no prop firm is flawless. YRM Prop has advantages (clear account structures, competitive pricing, straightforward evaluation path) and trade-offs that serious traders should understand before buying a challenge. For a full breakdown of rules, pricing, account types, and risk mechanics, read my complete YRM Prop review . For the most up-to-date information, always verify details directly on YRM Prop’s official website or their help center .

The Weekend Holding Ban: Exactly What's Prohibited

Friday Close to Sunday Open = Dead Zone

Prohibited period: Friday 4:15 PM EST through Sunday 6:00 PM EST

During this 50+ hour window, you cannot have any open positions. Not ES, not NQ, not gold, not crude — nothing. Accounts must be completely flat when markets close Friday, and they must remain flat through the entire weekend until you actively choose to enter new positions Sunday evening.

What this means in practice:

Allowed:

• Friday 3:30 PM: Hold 3 ES long
• Friday 4:10 PM: Close all ES positions
• Friday 4:15 PM: Account is flat (compliant)
• Sunday 6:05 PM: Enter new 3 ES long position

Prohibited:

• Friday 3:30 PM: Hold 3 ES long
• Friday 4:10 PM: Forget to close positions
• Friday 4:15 PM: Account still holding 3 ES (INSTANT BREACH)
• Account terminated

Also prohibited (attempting to game the system):

• Friday 4:14 PM: Close 3 ES
• Friday 4:15 PM: Account flat (temporary)
• Friday 4:16 PM: Re-enter 3 ES hoping to hold through weekend
• Friday 5:00 PM: Markets close and you're still holding positions
• Monday morning: Wake up to breached account

You cannot hold positions through Friday market close into the weekend. Period.

No Exceptions for Any Reason

"But my position is profitable!" — Don't care. Close it.

"But there's major support right here!" — Close it.

"But I'll lose my entry if I close!" — You'll lose your entire account if you don't. Close it.

"But the weekend news is probably bullish!" — Probably isn't definitely. Markets don't care about your probable thesis when they gap 80 points against you Sunday open. Close it.

The weekend holding ban has zero flexibility. YRM Prop doesn't review circumstances, doesn't care about your reasoning, doesn't make exceptions. If you're holding positions at 4:15 PM Friday, you're breached.

Why Weekend Gaps Are Catastrophic for Prop Firms

Weekend Gap Reality Check

Let's be clear about what weekend gaps actually look like in futures markets:

Recent weekend gap examples (ES):

• Russia invades Ukraine (Feb 2022): ES gaps down 80+ points Sunday open
• Banking crisis / SVB collapse (Mar 2023): ES gaps down 60+ points Sunday open
• COVID WHO pandemic declaration (Mar 2020): ES gaps down 140+ points Sunday open
• OPEC surprise production cut (Apr 2023): ES gaps up 40+ points Sunday open
• Chinese COVID lockdown announcements: Multiple 50-70 point gaps

These aren't theoretical. These are real gaps that happened while markets were closed Friday 5:00 PM through Sunday 6:00 PM, and every single one of them would have destroyed traders holding leveraged futures positions through the weekend.

Simulated Environment Can't Model Gaps

YRM Prop operates in a simulated trading environment during Challenge and Prime phases. Simulated environments can't accurately replicate gap behavior including:

Order filling during gaps: Your stop-loss at ES 5800 means nothing if market gaps from 5850 Friday close to 5750 Sunday open. Where do you get filled? 5750? 5730? 5780? Slippage during gaps is unpredictable and often brutal.

Liquidity modeling: Weekend gaps often occur on thin liquidity at Sunday open. The first trades might execute 30-40 points away from where theoretical models suggest. Simulated environments can't accurately model this chaos.

Multiple-leg order failure: If you're holding a spread or trying to exit with OCO orders, gap conditions can cause one leg to fill while the other doesn't, leaving you with unintended exposure.

YRM Prop's simulated capital means they're not willing to accept these unknown variables. They can model normal market conditions with reasonable accuracy, but weekend gaps break their models — so they eliminate weekend exposure entirely.

Unlimited Loss Potential

Futures contracts don't have stock-like price limits. ES can theoretically gap down 500 points if a civilization-ending event occurs over the weekend. Your $50,000 account with 5 ES contracts long (maximum on 50K Challenge) would be facing:

• 500-point gap × $50/point × 5 contracts = $125,000 loss
• Your $2,000 drawdown limit? Completely irrelevant.
• Your stop-loss orders? Didn't execute.
• Your account? More than blown — you owe negative balance.

Prop firms operating on simulated capital would be exposed to these scenarios if they allowed weekend holding. By forcing everyone flat Friday, they cap maximum loss exposure to overnight gaps (smaller, more predictable) rather than weekend gaps (potentially unlimited, totally unpredictable).

What This Means for Your Trading Strategy

Swing Trading Is Dead at YRM Prop

Traditional swing trading that holds positions 2-5 days through weekends is completely incompatible with YRM Prop's structure. If your proven strategy involves entering Wednesday and exiting Monday, you can't execute that strategy with YRM Prop capital.

YRM Prop is built for:

• Day traders (enter and exit same day)
• Overnight session traders (enter evening, exit next afternoon)
• Short-term position traders (enter Monday, exit Thursday — but flat every Friday)

YRM Prop is NOT built for:

• Swing traders holding 3-7 days
• Position traders holding weeks/months
• Weekend gap opportunity traders

If your entire strategy revolves around weekend holds, don't waste your time with YRM Prop. Find a firm that aligns with your methodology rather than trying to force square peg into round hole.

Friday Trading Becomes High-Risk

The Friday 4:15 PM mandatory close creates unique pressure that doesn't exist Monday-Thursday. Many traders (myself included) just avoid trading Fridays entirely or close positions by 2:00 PM to eliminate late-day stress.

Why Friday is dangerous:

Liquidity drain: Institutional traders square positions Friday afternoon. By 3:00 PM, liquidity is noticeably thinner, spreads wider, slippage more common.

Deadline pressure: When you MUST close by 4:15 PM regardless of where your position stands, you're trading with a hard time limit. If you enter Friday 2:00 PM and position moves against you, you can't "wait it out" or "give it one more hour" — you're closing before deadline even if taking a loss.

Weekend news risk affects Friday: Even though you're not holding over the weekend, Friday afternoon price action often reflects anticipated weekend news risk. If major events are expected over weekend, Friday afternoon might be choppy or trend strongly as traders position for potential Monday gaps.

My Friday approach: I typically stop taking new positions after 12:00 PM Friday. Focus the morning on any existing positions from earlier in the week, close everything by 1:00-2:00 PM, and enjoy a clean weekend. Is this leaving money on the table? Maybe. But it eliminates the entire category of "Friday afternoon rush to close positions before deadline" stress that causes rushed decisions.

Friday Afternoon Execution Challenges

Between 3:00-4:00 PM Friday, you're competing with every other YRM Prop trader who also needs to flatten before deadline. This creates potential execution issues:

Crowded exits: If everyone's trying to exit ES long positions at 3:45 PM, that selling pressure can move price against you more than typical.

Platform stability: More traders actively managing positions during that final hour means platform servers are under higher load. I've never seen Volumetrica crash, but higher activity periods always carry some risk of technical issues.

Your own stress levels: Rushing to close multiple positions while watching the clock tick toward 4:15 PM creates emotional pressure that leads to mistakes. You might close at worse prices than you would with no deadline, or forget to cancel working orders, or mismanage position sizing on the exit.

Solution: Close earlier. If your last entry of the week is Wednesday or Thursday, you have all day Friday to methodically exit at good prices rather than scrambling Friday 4:00 PM.

The "Reconstitute Your Position" Workaround

Can You Game the System?

Some traders attempt to maintain "continuous" exposure through this workaround:

Friday 4:10 PM: Close 3 ES long at 5850 (compliant with mandatory flat)Sunday 6:05 PM: Re-enter identical 3 ES long position at 5855

Technically, you've complied with the Friday close requirement and haven't held over the weekend. The positions are separate: one closed Friday, one opened Sunday. They just happen to be the same direction and size.

Is this allowed? Yes, technically. You're flat Friday 4:15 PM as required, and you're entering a new position Sunday evening after markets reopen.

Is this smart? Usually not.

Why Reconstituting Positions Usually Fails

Gap risk still hurts you: You closed ES Friday at 5850. Sunday open gaps down to 5780. Your new entry at 5780 means you're "continuing" a position that's now 70 points worse than where you closed Friday. The weekend gap still affected you — you just took the pain on entry rather than on a held position.

Commission costs: Closing Friday and re-entering Sunday generates two sets of commissions. On a $50K account trading 3 ES, that's 6 contracts-worth of round-trip commissions that add up over time.

Execution risk: Your exit price Friday and entry price Sunday are different. Bid-ask spread, slippage, and gap differences mean you're not maintaining a continuous position — you're exiting one and entering another with execution risk on both sides.

Psychological pressure: If you KNOW you're going to re-enter Sunday, you're effectively holding mental exposure over the weekend even though the position is technically flat. You're still stressed about weekend news even though you can't do anything about it.

You're not actually swing trading: True swing trading holds positions because the strategy expects continuation through the closed period. If you're just trying to maintain exposure through creative timing, you're fighting against the platform rules rather than trading with an actual edge.

When Reconstituting Makes Sense

You have strong Sunday open thesis: If your analysis specifically suggests Sunday evening after weekend news will offer good entry point, then closing Friday and re-entering Sunday is just smart trading, not gaming the system.

You're running 2+ week macro thesis: If your position sizing supports a multi-week directional bias and you're willing to eat weekend gap risk through repeated re-entries, then yes, this can work. But you're essentially treating each week as a separate trade rather than one continuous position.

You accept the costs: If commission costs and gap slippage are smaller than the edge you have in your thesis, then the workaround makes mathematical sense.

My take? If you're thinking about this workaround, you're probably running the wrong strategy on the wrong platform. YRM Prop is designed for intraday and overnight strategies, not swing trading. Use the platform for what it's good at rather than trying to force it into something it's not.

Competitor Comparison: Who Allows Weekend Holding?

Most futures prop firms prohibit weekend holding. Topstep's allowance of weekend holds on funded accounts is somewhat unique in the industry and makes them attractive for swing traders.

Weekend Holding Rules FAQ

What if I forget to close positions before Friday 4:15 PM?

Your account is instantly breached and terminated. No warnings, no grace period, no appeals. The system checks at 4:15:00 PM EST — if any positions are open, account disabled permanently.

Can I hold positions into Friday close if I promise to close them Sunday open?

No. Markets close Friday 5:00 PM EST. If you're still holding at 5:00 PM, you've violated the mandatory flat requirement since the deadline was 4:15 PM.

What if I close at 4:14:30 PM — is 30 seconds enough buffer?

Technically yes, but you're gambling with your account. Platform execution delays, server lag, or exchange processing time could mean your close order doesn't execute until 4:15:01 PM. Use at LEAST a 5-minute buffer — close by 4:10 PM latest.

Does the weekend prohibition apply to Challenge accounts or only funded accounts?

Both. Weekend holding is banned across all YRM Prop account types including Starter Challenge, Prime, and Instant Prime.

What if major news breaks Friday evening after I've closed positions?

You can react Sunday 6:01 PM when markets reopen. You cannot re-open positions Friday evening — markets are closed and you wouldn't be able to execute anyway.

Can I enter positions Friday 4:14 PM with 1 minute until deadline?

Technically yes, but why would you? You'd need to close within 60 seconds, making it completely impractical. Don't enter new positions after 3:00 PM Friday.

What if I travel over the weekend and forget I have pending orders that execute Sunday?

If you placed working orders Friday that trigger Sunday at market open, you're responsible for managing those positions. Forgetting about working orders isn't an excuse. Cancel all working orders before Friday close.

Does YRM Prop ever make exceptions for weekend holding?

Never. Zero exceptions under any circumstances. Weekend holding violations are automatic termination.

Can I hold through holidays when markets are closed?

If markets close for a holiday Monday (like Labor Day), the same weekend holding ban applies — all positions must be flat before the holiday close. This includes Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and other exchange holidays.

What if another prop firm allows weekend holding — can I hedge by holding opposite positions?

No. Multi-prop hedging where you hold opposing positions across different firms is explicitly banned even when one firm allows weekend holding.

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