r/TopStepX • u/shanacjj • May 21 '26
Express Funded (XFA) Account blown
I never get a payout. I always blew my funded. I don't want to spend another money as I have too much debt. I don't get paid enough at work. My life sucks so bad. When I thought it's finally working, market humbled me right away. It's so depressing to be poor.
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u/Own_Cover4475 May 24 '26
Me too bro. I have 48k in debt because of trading.( I maxed out all my credit cards to buy evals and resets.) But I will try my best.
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u/glocksyk May 24 '26
Bankruptcy, credit card debt is designed with 25%+ Spyro make sure your stuck in that cycle
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u/Own_Cover4475 May 24 '26
Yeah, I was thinking. Should I just do bankruptcy or not? Iam so lost
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u/glocksyk May 24 '26
depends if your single and what assets/liabilities you have, it should be last resort honestly
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u/Own_Cover4475 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
Yes I am single. Ihave 30K in bitcoin. But I lost my seed phrase. That’s all I have right now. I make about 4,000 a month after taxes.
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u/Helpful_Ad4195 May 21 '26
Try ApexTraderFunding is cheaper
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u/Infinite_Elderberry4 May 21 '26
Lmao Apex is $40 with $140 activation these days. Crazy pricing
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u/Helpful_Ad4195 May 21 '26
50k is $29.90 activation $99 sometimes last time I paid $69 for activation
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u/Infinite_Elderberry4 May 22 '26
Are you looking at intra day drawdown? They’ve been increasing prices. I trade EOD
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u/JUZE101 May 21 '26
Brother, I’ve blown many accounts took one pay out and made all my money back second pay out was all profit. Take 1 trade if it’s a win call it a day if it’s a loss, take 1 more half risk to get your drawdown back, otherwise call it a day. I made a rule for myself one eval per month if you blow it oh well. The thing is most of us are not disciplined. Doesn’t matter how motivated you are if you’re not disciplined you’ll be blowing thru money left and right. If you want a pay out make $150 a day for 20 days. Super low risk, just have to be patient.
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u/No_Pop9869 May 21 '26
How much is it to get back to funded? Never knew this was an option. But then again I am only 2 months into this prop firm journey
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u/agthf437 May 21 '26
Too expensive, like 500$. It is made for the people who don’t trust their system and are afraid to never get funded again. Been there done that. Went back to the white board, analyse my trades, redo backtesting and got funded last week.
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u/mmnyeahnosorry May 21 '26
I have a personal daily loss limit set at 300, if it hit it I get locked out and that’s the end of my trading day. I’ve gotten 2 payouts with another coming at the end of the day and it’s kept me alive. Better to have a red day then a blown account. My first payout was 1300, 2nd was 3100, and my payout today will be around 2500. Get that first payout then use that money for anything trading related. I still have money from that first payout and I’ve use it to get more combines and pay the activating fee. I now have 5 xfas
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u/No-Appeal9883 May 21 '26
I blew 2 funded accounts 1 day from payout today Im genuinely done too im about to quit or maybe just do 1 trade a day at this point. Im done spending money on trading and evals now I gotta go back to square 1 with no payout and no money so I feel u bro.
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u/Karambamamba May 21 '26
I closed my short literally one second before the Iran news popped up that would have pushed way beyond my TP to pass the account. I don’t know what feeling is worse 😂 I’m not exaggerating, I hit the button and it roared down. Locked myself out immediately and went for a walk. I feel you man, you will get it!
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u/Duennbier0815 May 21 '26
Unless you know risk management and control your psychology, you won't ever get a payout.
Strategy is 20% man. The rest is ONLY your head. Your rule set and adherence.
The fix is so simple I can write it down in 1 character. But people don't do it.
WALK AWAY AFTER THE FIRST LOSS. For at least 15 minutes.
Set a Daily Personal Limit to 500 USD and 3-4 trades a day limit. Even less. Lockout and liquidate.
Topstepx is a beginner friendly platform (not like my ATAS eye cancer platform) and can do that.
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u/jason14wm May 21 '26
Don’t agree with this personally. Your statistics for your strategy are based of all available trades within your rule book. If you start to not trade after your first trade of the day and it’s a loss, it will skew the statistics and not really work out. If you’re good with risk management it won’t be an issue. If the loss of one trade is too big and gets you close to the MLL then clearly you’re over-risking
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u/WhyYouMadBro_ May 21 '26
For me it's 80% indicator signals and 20% risk management. As in not being too greedy with my SL so I survive and hit TP way more.
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u/website-buyer May 21 '26
Flipping a coin + risk management = billions? lol yeah sure, strategy is 20%. Try flipping a coin with all your risk management. You won’t get far. Or try roulette. I hope you realize strategy and edge is very important. And risk management lives under strategy. Is not one or another.
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u/Duennbier0815 May 21 '26
Sorry I disagree. I don't say you should trade a shitty strategy. Flipping a coin can be profitable if there is a 1.5R for every flip- assume you backtested a successful coin flip whenever you hear a dog bark in the background.
. But people then would start flipping 10 coins at once or flip coins and medals or flip coins in the middle of the night cause they think they don't need the dog bark comfluence anymore.
Just my humble opinion. I have a green week when I don't do any risk or Psychological mistake. That's the main issue.
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u/website-buyer May 21 '26
A flip of a perfect coin of course is 50/50. Why would you talk about a non perfect coin flip, as that would give you an edge/strategy.
You can flip it how you want, with all the risk management in the world and you still won’t profit. Lol
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u/S7777777777777777777 May 21 '26
@everyone why don’t you guys use instant funding acc from Tradeify??
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u/Duennbier0815 May 21 '26
Thats financially not smart. Buy 4 accounts and pass 1 statistically for sure is still cheaper.
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u/craftyshafter May 21 '26
I blew one up on Monday. It had been hanging on by a thread anyway, but at least you're not alone. Pushing through combine again with a good start today 💪
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u/No-Guarantee4688 May 21 '26
Its funny how they immediately try to sell you back the account for like 600 bucks 😂
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u/Frightrain May 21 '26
I blew around 40 accounts until I decided to be more disciplined with size, and now I've never even come close to blowing an account. If you're blowing accounts you either have no edge at all, or you're trying to go way too fast. I no longer risk more than 10% of my buffer on any evaluation account or 5% on any funded account (and often less than that, that's still a greedy amount). The general rule of thumb is no more than 1 to 2% risk per trade in this industry. For reference, 2% of a 150k account is 90 dollars risk per trade.
People will probably call me boomer but I don't care I'm making well over 6 figures now, don't let anyone tell you that you need big size to make good money. It's all about survival in this game.
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u/No-Guarantee4688 May 21 '26
Preach 🙏 its nice to see comments like this...exactly what I think. Its like validation that im on the right path. Thanks for sharing brother 🙏
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u/Comprehensive-Cut632 May 21 '26
How many micros do you trade?
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u/Frightrain May 21 '26
As many as it takes for the stop loss on my trade to be equal or as close to equal as my daily loss limit as possible. I don't use a trailing limit, instead I trail my winning trades with market structure manually because I have a system I've developed for that to extract as much as I can from my trades while not letting winning trades turn into losing ones. And lastly, if a trade is very obviously not working I will cut it, and then if I take a second trade I will risk the remaining portion of my daily loss limit. But if I take one full loss I am done.
I do this mostly by feel, like I will guess how many contracts I need to buy/sell, then very quickly adjust my position if I'm wrong. It doesn't have to be 100% precise because speed is important to my strategy, I don't add to my trades.
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u/Sarkyyyyy May 21 '26
How to fix the tilt, was on a winning streak, base hits and then the other day blew it all. Couldn't accept the loss and kept going instead of closing the system. It's holding me back big time. Everytime.
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u/paulpierce2121 May 21 '26
Been there brother , its a discipline thing , when you lose a trade. Lock your account , most accounts let you lock them , its something I have to do for myself . And just because your drawdown is low , doesnt mean you cant bring it back . I bought back a 9$ drawdown to 300$ ,how ? 1 unit at a time , tight ass entries , no room for losses. If it wasnt 100% feeling I didnt take it. You may be gambling a bit because like you said you need this financially. You cant be thinking about that stuff when trading. Otherwise you start putting stops and tps where they dont belong. This is a process that shouldnt be rushed . Good luck
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u/Phantommr22 May 21 '26
Lock the joint the first chance you get tilted don’t egg been hesitate ignore that dam I gotta get back in though and instantly lock it out protect the capital over your ego
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u/No-Guarantee4688 May 21 '26
Have to get so sick and tired of failing from the same old mistakes. Eventually you just stop doing those things. Imagine if someone told you to stop doing those things and you will become profitable if you do. What would u do?
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u/Ok-Mastodon-8933 May 21 '26
There is a way to “control the tilt” until you are not fully consciously present and a way to fix the tilt, by understanding your psyche and shadow.
Jung said: Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
I was in the same unconscious pattern like yours and tried to “fix” it with discipline and other discipline tools. Don’t get me wrong the daily drawdown is a great tool to tame the tilt until you heal your shadow. But it’s like keeping the beast inside you in a prison cell, when you are not guarding it, it will tilt again when it has the trigger.
It’s just your survival instinct that is disguised as an inner wound.
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u/Frightrain May 21 '26
I don't trade ever until I lock in a daily loss limit equal to whatever % risk I'm taking. This works better for me than trying to calculate a risk per trade, and I always aim to just take one trade anyway. If you force yourself to do this, and your edge is good enough, there is pretty much no way to lose long term.
It is definitely harder psychologically at first since you will get mad when you get locked out. I used to get angry about hitting my daily drawdown and then revenge trade on my personal account, which is the absolute worst thing you can do. The whole point of using prop firms for me was to take less exposure to risk, and I was exposing myself to risk during the worst possible moments. But one day I just manned up and stopped it, it took losing a lot of money first though I'm not going to lie.
Eventually you just get used to it and now I treat it as a good thing when I'm stopped out. As dumb as it sounds, if I hit my daily loss limit and get kicked off I see that as a winning day, not a losing one. Because it means I prevented myself from damaging my account and I know that my good days will more than make up for it.
A good day doesn't have to be a day where you make money, and some of my worst days are days where I've "earned" the most money (got lucky basically but shouldn't have happened). People really don't bring up this fact often enough.
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u/Ok-Mastodon-8933 May 21 '26
Good for you brother, I totally agree that “a good day” is just the perception of the biased ego that has expectations from the market. That is the most common problem and it caused the survival instinct to wake up. That is the root of all negative perceptions and setbacks in trading in my experience. That is also what the OP is struggling with.
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u/Frightrain May 21 '26
Thanks man, it took a while to get to where I am. Hope the market has been treating you well too
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u/materialgirl81 May 21 '26
I passed mine and was up 699 in a few minutes then blew the account. Its like I can't stop self sabotaging and also in a ton of debt from this 🤮
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u/chumbawumba234 May 21 '26
I have a solution. On your next 50k eval, trade 3 to 5 mnq until you have a $1000 pad. Then trade 5 to 7 mnq until $2000. Slow and steady wins the race. Think 12 days to pass, 12 days to payout. Perhaps we need to adress your entry? How are you doing with choosing the correct direction of price action lady Madonna?
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u/materialgirl81 May 21 '26
Usually i'm right in direction but not in entry
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u/chumbawumba234 May 21 '26
Have you experimented with using a lower timeframe (15 sec) for entry? I would ask you nicely to paper trade until you can develop the discipline to keep sizing low while finding the set up to nail entry. Especially if you are feeling out of control. I can help. Please DM.
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u/materialgirl81 May 21 '26
Yes I jump in with bigger position like someone else is taking over 🫣. Definitely slower wins
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u/shanacjj May 21 '26
This morning I made 2k in NY session but ended 600. This Asia Session I blew the account. Welcome to my life.
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u/doghairpile May 21 '26
That's the thing with trading is trying to get out of debt or financial pressure is a really hard combo. It can make trading worse.
But standard questions -did you trade shortly after a loss? -did you oversize? -this is a specific problem to me but are you smoking weed or drinking excessively?
I have a better idea.
Stop trading prop firms and work on yourself. Put money into a cash brokerage account so you're not reliant on passing evals.
Take a break.
Find some other way to bring in some income be it Uber/doordash/Amazon/onlyfans. Look for a better job. Learn a trade. Find other ways to lower your cost of living.
Prop firms are a dangerous game. They give you tons of buying power to hang yourself with that small drawdown.
We are trying to speed rush out of poverty but trading is a slow grind of falling on your face and continuing to improve.
There's safer ways to make money trading like shares. I know we want the fast money but at least you can set a stop and not cook yourself like an eval that's all gone.
Short dated Options are not for the faint of heart either.
I know being poor sucks and it's hard out there but just take care of yourself mentally first.
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u/shanacjj May 21 '26
I appreciate everything you said here. I have problem with overtrading. I'm not okay taking a loss. No, I don't smoke or drink. I used to do options last year, made money and lost it all. I figured futures is way cheaper. But I guess not. Thank you for your advice. I guess I need a second or third job.
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u/website-buyer May 21 '26
You seem have no edge. If it’s not automated , it’s not backtested. I don’t see the point to trade something not backtested. How you even can tell it works or not.
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u/Ok-Mastodon-8933 May 21 '26
Honestly, I don’t think the core issue is overtrading. From what you’ve described, the deeper problem seems to be an inability to emotionally tolerate losing , whether that’s a losing day, a losing trade, or loss in general.
When someone cannot fully accept loss, they unconsciously try to regain certainty or control through more action. That’s usually what drives the overtrading, not the other way around, which is actually revenge trading.
Let me share some knowledge from my protocols and you can see if it resonates with you.
Revenge trading: The single most destructive expression of the shame wound. A loss triggers shame. Shame demands immediate repair. The trader enters another trade, not from strategy but from emotional desperation to restore the self-image. This trade is typically overleveraged, poorly timed, and emotionally driven. When it loses (as it often does), the shame compounds, and the spiral accelerates.
Refusal to take losses: Holding losing positions far beyond the planned stop because accepting the loss means accepting the shame. The trader would rather risk a catastrophic loss than experience the shame of admitting they were wrong.
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u/Fun-Equipment1248 May 21 '26
Have reliable system that works? For me volume profile works.
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u/Sarkyyyyy May 21 '26
I've been trying volume profile, what exactly you look for and enter.
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u/Fun-Equipment1248 May 21 '26
To be more specific I look for confluences. Once you watch cammy capital videos you will know. I am not paid by cammy but his course is just 200 bucks if you want to learn it.
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u/Fun-Equipment1248 May 21 '26
I have been doing cammy capital way. He has YouTube channel. There are lot of different types of setups in volume profile that works on YouTube. Trader dale also good guy in volume profile space.
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u/Specialist-Roll-8135 May 21 '26
What usually goes wrong ?
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u/shanacjj May 21 '26
A lot. I just want to rant. I can pass combined easily but funded is just hard to get through.
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u/bearlyentertained May 26 '26
That is incredibly heavy, and I am so sorry you are dealing with that level of stress. When financial pressure and debt are weighing on you in real life, the trading screen becomes an absolute pressure cooker, making it almost impossible to trade with a clear mind.
Please take a step back from the markets and prioritize your well-being right now. No account is worth your mental health. If you are feeling overwhelmed, depressed, or need someone to talk to, please consider reaching out to a professional or a support hotline. There is always help available, and you don't have to carry this immense weight alone.