It doesn't seem that way to me. Many think they're actually 'funded' in their simulator account. And among the few who are funded with a live account it seems like many finds it a good deal. From my POV, trading a live account with such a firm would only be beneficial if you actually received additional funding and they'd stake you with (substantial) capital beyond the profits YOU yourself accumulated. I don't see that being the case with any of these firms. At any point in time you're basically risking your own profits. So why not withdraw them, deposit them with a discount broker and receive 100 % of the profits at a lower tax bracket? This may however be off-topic, so maybe we should just leave it at that.
Really? Even when a buy/sell-stop order briefly entered far from the price doesn't show up in the DoM? It's not difficult to distinguish between live and sim, surely? At any point after the very first stages, for sure. Well, tax considerations vary hugely from country to country, and these are businesses with customers worldwide (apart from banned countries, obviously). I suspect you and I actually disagree about very little, in this context, anyway.
Well thats certainly very well done indeed. Did you go all in using max contract size available to achieve that ? Only way I can think of achieving that, as 10k per one contract well not sure how you could do that in one day, but sizing up with as many contracts as they allow you, yep. Plus copytrading 5 accounts. But when I checked their copy trading rules after reading that it seems they only allow that on their sim accounts, not on the real money live account of which apparently you're only allowed to have one. Is that something new, has that changed since you achieved your really excellent results ? Can I have more than one Funded Level Account? Updated over 2 months ago Yes, you can have more than one Express Funded Account, but it's important to note that this only pertains to the Express Funded Account. Only one Live Funded Account per trader is permitted. You can have up to five (5) Express Funded Accounts active at the same time. You can see more details and FAQs about Multiple Express Funded Accounts here: Multiple Express Funded Accounts You can only have one (1) Live Funded Account active. When you receive a Live Funded Account, all Express Funded Accounts are closed. https://help.topstep.com/en/articles/8284219-can-i-have-more-than-one-funded-level-account They also said that once you've achieved a certain level of profitability you have to close your sim accounts and move to one single live account. I mean yeah otherwise they'd go bankrupt in no time right... Can I decline the invitation to move to a Live Funded Account and stay in the Express Funded Account instead? No, it is not possible to stay in an Express Funded Account and decline to move to a Live Funded Account. Once our Risk Managers determine you're ready to move to a Live Funded Account, your options are to make the switch from Express to Live or close your Express Funded Account. What Happens When I Get Called Up to the Live Funded Account? Below is the process of moving to a Live Funded Account: When Topstep determines that a trader has shown consistent success in the Express Funded Account, that trader will receive an email to move to a Live Funded Account. At that time, all open Express Funded Accounts will be closed. https://help.topstep.com/en/article...ccount-live-funded-account-faq-s#h_2939450d26 So at least that shows that they really are on the side of the trader and have an actual interest in having a few star traders making real money, unlike the other sim only bucket shops making money only off of evaluation fees, betting on the huge majority of aspirants losing. And even if you're not really trading a 100k or whatever account there, you do have the option of getting the margin to trade full size contracts. I'm at IB via Prorealtime, ES margin there is sthg like 25K atm, so getting that for a fee of 100-200 or what it is bucks IS a PRETTY GOOD DEAL if you ask me. Even more so if like someone said here you can scale up with Topstep, what was it, allowing someone to trade 30 contracts. Yep. And they've been around a long time, have a couple ex floor traders who've been around the block, so really pretty good. I always had a negative view of this new(ish) generation of prop firms till I read this, was not aware that there are some good ones actually allowing their traders to trade on the real market, in a true win/win partnership. So thanks for writing all this, learned sthg new again, always keep an open mind.
30 X 25K margin = $ 750 K. Getting there from virtually zero, well, yep, that DOES sound good. And yeah I know there are brokers offering lower margins, but if you want to be an early bird trading the European session where a lot of the action is even Ninjatrader are at sthg like $22K initial margin for the ES.
No. I've never exceeded 3 contracts on my larger days. I trade the larger moves and don't scalp. The best day was the 3rd of September last year with two short trades on 3 contracts each. 1 x 20 points and 1 x 100 points. PER account. My net P&L with Topstep that day was $81 256,50. You can copy trade 5 so called Express Funded Accounts still. It's all on their webpage. If you're taken live, your 5 accounts will get merged to a live account, but capped at 150K (used to be 250K). When I started trading with Topstep last summer it was an amazing deal. They've since taken steps to protect their operations with some more limitations. For example, last year you could withdraw 50 % (minus a 10 % cut) of your profits as long as you had 5 x $200 green days. Since then, they've added a $5K cap per account per payout. Making it a bit harder to extract those sim bucks. Topstep is solid as long as they don't add any more rules and restrictions. I was very negative, too, and have written about it extensively on the boards in the past. But, when I learned about copy trading that was the game changer for me personally. You just have to understand what THIS is. It's not about some firm who's looking to find trading talent and will give you a million bucks if you're good. It's a BUCKET SHOP operation and if you're skilled you can exploit that for profit. The cool thing about Topstep is they will actually give you a live account eventually. If that's something you care for (I don't in particular, but I know it's a big thing for some people). But until you get that account it's no doubt a bucket shop. Incidentally, I just passed a new round with Toptep today, so I'm going to start trading a new set of XFA accounts by end of the week or early next week. Unless something changed with the spike of volatility, you have day trading margin whenever the market's open. Overnight margin only applies through the electronic close for 1 hour every weekday.
Thats some truly great trading there LF LOL think I've been with IB too long, honestly didn't know that about overnight margin at Ninja only applying through the electronic 1hr close /
Overnight margin only applies through the electronic close for 1 hour every weekday. Ok so what happens if you take lot of positions based on Day trading margin and for that 1 hour your margin requirement is very high!
It was a question base don the statement "Overnight margin only applies through the electronic close for 1 hour every weekday"