Weekend Holding
Carrying a position through the Friday close into Sunday's reopen — restricted at many futures firms, and the single biggest gap risk a funded account can take.
Weekend holding means leaving a futures position open when the market closes Friday afternoon and staying in it until trading resumes Sunday evening. Many futures prop firms restrict or prohibit it, and those that allow it often want reduced size.
The reason is a risk you cannot manage with a stop order. For roughly 46 hours, the market is closed and the world is not. Central bank statements, geopolitical events, and major corporate news all land while your position sits there and you have no ability to exit. When futures reopen Sunday evening, the first print can be well away from Friday’s close — and your protective stop doesn’t fill at your price, it fills at the first available price beyond it.
Make it concrete. You hold 3 ES over a weekend with a stop 15 points below your entry — a $2,250 risk you’ve accepted ($50/point × 15 × 3). The index reopens 40 points lower on a Sunday-evening headline. Your stop triggers into the gap and fills near the open: 40 points × $50 × 3 = $6,000. You planned for $2,250 and got a number nearly three times larger, without a single decision going wrong. On a funded account with a $2,500 or $3,000 drawdown, the gap alone decided the outcome.
That asymmetry is why the rule exists, and why most professional funded traders would flatten into Friday’s close even if no rule required it. There’s no edge in an unhedgeable, unstoppable 46-hour exposure — just variance.
If your strategy genuinely needs multi-day holds, that’s fine: find a firm that permits weekend positions, size down for the hold, and know your gap exposure in dollars before Friday’s close.
Read overnight and weekend holding rules for firm-by-firm context, then choose a firm that fits your style in our directory.