The news filter

Big US releases move every market in seconds, and some prop firms restrict trading around them. Tick Don't open trades near big US news in section 5 and choose:

• Which releases: the jobs report (NFP), CPI, the Fed rate decision (FOMC), GDP, PCE inflation, retail sales and PPI.
• Minutes before and minutes after: no new trades from this long before a release until this long after it. A waiting stop or limit order is cancelled in that window.
• Also close open trades before the news, if you'd rather not hold a trade through it.

How it's checked

Like everything else, it's checked when each bar closes. On hourly bars with 30 minutes before, a trade that would open at the bar just before an 8:30 New York release is skipped. On 5-minute bars it's much more exact.

Where the release times come from

• Backtests (the preview, and every platform's tester): official release times back to 2016, from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, BEA and Census (through the St. Louis Fed's release archive) and the Federal Reserve's meeting calendar. They're written into the exported file, so platform backtests match the preview.
• Live, after the day you export:

MT4: allow the calendar address

In MetaTrader 4, choose Tools > Options > Expert Advisors, tick Allow WebRequest for listed URL and add https://proppasscheck.com. Without it the EA still trades and still avoids every release up to the day you exported, and prints a reminder in the Experts log.

Time zones

Release times follow the same clock as your trading hours: the time zone in the Export box (pick the one your broker's server uses for MT4 and MT5). See Trading hours, days and time zones.