Prague server time and the 2,000-request ceiling
Automation is allowed on MT5, MT4, cTrader, and DXtrade, but the hyperactivity cap is not a suggestion. Crossing 2,000 server requests in a day (entries, modifications, trailing ticks, partial closes) is how otherwise legal Expert Advisors get the account flagged. If you start a free Venasri account and route FTMO through the ZeroMQ MT5 Bridge, you can count modifications instead of discovering the cap after a dense London session on XAUUSD.
10% then 5%, four days, and the $540 $100K ticket
Phase 1 asks for 10% ($10,000 on a $100K challenge). Phase 2 asks for 5% ($5,000). The minimum trading days are four, not a calendar deadline, which is why grinding 0.4% days still works if the daily 5% line never prints. There is no hard mathematical consistency formula, but a single-ticket gamble that produces most of the 10% still goes through risk review. The 1-Step product keeps the 10% overall cap and drops daily loss to 3%, with an end-of-day trailing maximum instead of the 2-Step static floor. That trailing version is the wrong cousin for swing traders who need the closed-balance 10% room after a winning week.
On $100K the daily cash line is $5,000 and the static lifetime floor is $10,000 below initial balance. Risking 0.50% ($500) per idea leaves ten full stop-outs before the daily line, which is the spacing that survives a correlated EURUSD and XAUUSD morning. Bi-weekly payouts start 14 days after the first funded trade, at 80% split scaling toward 90%. The evaluation fee on $100K is $540, refundable in the usual FTMO sense only after you are funded and in profit, so the real cost of a revenge day is the fee plus the four-day clock restart.
The floating-profit rollover that fails funded Standard accounts
The primary FTMO trap is not a 10% slow bleed. It is closing a winning day on the balance ledger while a large unrealized runner stays open past 00:00 CE(S)T. The new day's 5% allowance is computed from day-start balance plus floating PnL at that instant. If the runner then gives back $3,000 while London sells off, that giveback spends the new daily budget even though yesterday already looked like a win in the app. Standard funded accounts add a second tripwire: a CPI or NFP print two minutes either side of the timestamp can restrict the trade, and a weekend gap on Monday can tag the same daily clock.
Swing accounts remove those two holding bans, which is why traders who actually swing should buy Swing rather than hoping Standard support will forgive a Friday gold hold. Neither account type forgives a 2,001st modify. Tick-trailing bots that rewrite stops every few seconds will hit the cap before the 5% line ever comes into view. Size the trail step in price, not in time, if you want the 2,000-message budget to last through New York.
Where Venasri sits on an FTMO chart
Set Venasri Equity Guard to flatten at about $4,250 of open daily loss on a $100K FTMO 2-Step ($5,000 official line minus a 0.75% buffer). The guard polls equity every 3 seconds, independent of whether a strategy is armed, which is the only way a Prague midnight spike gets closed before FTMO's own breach engine prints the email. Pair that with 24/7 MT5 Bot Control so news blackout windows on Standard funded accounts actually halt new entries 30 minutes before a red-folder release rather than relying on you to watch Forex Factory at 02:00.
Manual tickets still need an immediate Stop-Loss. FTMO does not require a hard SL on every 2-Step fill the way some Bootcamp products do, but a naked gold lot into the COMEX reopen is how the 5% line disappears in one candle. Attach SL, breakeven, and staged targets from the same ZeroMQ path so modifications stay well under 2,000. The static 10% floor then becomes a planning number, not a surprise.
