5:00 PM ET is a daily flatten, not a Friday courtesy
The futures close on this desk is 5:00 PM ET. Positions are flat before it. That single habit also removes weekend holding, because Friday's close is the same rule as Wednesday's. Traders who came from a firm that only polices Friday afternoon will be early on Friday and late every other day if they remember the wrong sentence. Here the sentence is daily.
The Test trail updates at that same close. A winner you intended to swing is either closed, and it counts in today's equity, or it is still open, and it is a violation. There is no third state where the firm holds it for you overnight and ignores the gap. Automation controls should send the flatten on a clock, not after you notice the session has ended.
An $800 gap is not a swap charge, and it still counts
One NQ is $20 a point, so 40 points is $800. Two contracts are $1,600, which is most of the $2,200 day, spent while you were away from the screen. Micro Nasdaq is $2 a point, so the same 40-point gap is $80 on one MNQ and $800 on ten. The gap does not become smaller because the economic story was a weekend. It becomes yours because the position was open.
A resting stop does not guarantee the reopen price. If the market skips through the stop, the fill is the skipped price, and the extra distance is still daily loss. The rule that avoids that auction is the 5:00 PM ET flatten. Use the stop for the cash session. Use the clock for the close.
The buffer still ends at 5:00 PM ET
Building the buffer changes the trail from intraday back toward a settled floor, and it opens day-one withdrawals at 80% on PRO or 90% on PRO+. It does not add permission to hold through 5:00 PM ET. A funded account that swings the Sunday reopen is still outside the weekend rule. The 50% consistency share is already gone on PRO, so the overnight hold is not helping a Test cap either.
News minutes around FOMC, NFP, and CPI are a second clock on PRO. A position flattened for the release and then reopened into the close still has to be out by 5:00 PM ET. Two rules, two alarms. Neither one is the midnight FX reset some traders import from a different prop style.
Pair the clock with a $1,450 cash stop
Equity Guard flattens a $100,000 day near $1,450 if the session goes against you before 5:00 PM ET. It should also flatten because the clock arrived, even when the day is green. A profit flatten is what stops today's winner from becoming tomorrow's gap. On $50,000 the daily loss is $1,100, so the loss flatten belongs near $725. On $150,000 the daily loss is $3,300, so the loss flatten belongs near $2,175.
Register with Venasri and set the flatten in Eastern Time. A phone set to Central will be early, which is survivable. A phone set to UTC can be late by hours, which is the gap. The firm's close is 5:00 PM ET, every day the contract trades.
