Trade surveillance and toxic flow detection for prop firms and brokers
Some accounts look too good because they are. Abusive and coordinated trading is one of the fastest ways a prop firm loses money, and one of the hardest to prove when a trader disputes a decision. We find it, document it and set up the alerts so it is caught next time.
The patterns that cost prop firms the most
- Cross-account hedging: one trader, or a group, opens opposite positions across several accounts so one of them always passes.
- Copy-trading clusters: many accounts placing the same trades at the same moment, which concentrates risk and often breaks program rules.
- Latency arbitrage and tick scalping: trading on stale prices or tiny moves the real market would never fill.
- News straddling and gap trading: positions placed around high-impact events to exploit slippage-free simulated fills.
- Martingale and grid behavior near drawdown limits: strategies that look profitable until the one move that breaks them.
How we investigate
- We combine trade history with account metadata such as IP addresses, devices, login history and payment details to map accounts that belong to the same person or group.
- We look at timing, symbols, direction and size across accounts, not one account at a time, because coordinated activity rarely shows inside a single account.
- Every flagged cluster comes with the evidence behind it and a recommended action: pay, deny, restrict or monitor. That evidence is what holds up when a trader complains publicly or files a chargeback.
Making it repeatable
A one-off investigation helps once. We also leave you with standing checks and alert thresholds your team can run every payout cycle, so the same pattern does not get paid twice.
Where your stack allows it, we help set up the queries and reports inside your existing tools, rather than adding another vendor.
What you get
- An evidence file per flagged account cluster
- A clear action for each cluster
- Standing surveillance checks and alert thresholds
- Rule changes that close the gaps the abuse used
- A short summary your management and support team can use
Questions
What is toxic flow in prop trading?
Toxic flow is trading activity that reliably takes money from the firm through exploits rather than skill, such as latency arbitrage, cross-account hedging, copy-trading clusters or news gaming.
Can you prove two accounts belong to the same person?
We build the case from shared IPs, devices, login patterns, payment details and trade timing. The output is evidence and a confidence level, not a guess.
Do you need access to our systems?
Read-only access after an NDA is signed. Nothing is changed without your approval.
Is this only for prop firms?
No. FX and CFD brokers face the same patterns, and the same methods apply to A-book and B-book routing decisions.