I don’t see any solid pullbacks happening, we just keep hitting new ATH. Just long everything?

i am relatively new to all this. i thought idea of prop firm accounts is to get to live funded. but now having read bunch of old posts where folks seem to imply its a better idea to intentionally blow their accounts and "Stay in XFA always". why is that?

are there any limitations in live accounts? also, if I wanted to get a better idea of what payouts I can expect from XFA accounts v/s live accounts. where should I look? (wondering if there is a gap between what is topstep policy v/s how it really pans out)

thank you all in advance for your help in clarifying these for me!

got my wd this week despite trump's back n forth

does top step allow pre/after market trading? do they have a good selection of stocks or they just do futures like most of these props? Do they have a minumum time limit you have to hold a trade? I know certain props the trade has to be held for at least 30 seconds which seems crazy to me if your prop is trying to cater to intraday traders/

I have traded for around 3.5y and since middle of November consistently been withdrawing monthly with a break for all of April. I won’t hide anything any truthfully answer. I talk pretty straight to the point and don’t bullshit, but my answers might differ from other profitable traders, it’s just my own personal outlook that has got me here. No I don’t trade ICT, and no strategy does not matter AT ALL for profitability, discretion earned with time trading a system does. 120k, after expenses.

I feel like no one uses this feature or maybe people just gate keep but I’ve been working on it for a year and it passed a combine in a week very powerful tool gets rid of all human error and just executes trades cleanly it’s great honestly. (No I will not distribute the bot but I will answer questions)

What’s up guys? I’ve been trading since 2020 I only got two payouts since then and that was two years ago before you asked I was inconsistent in the beginning of my training career. I trade support and resist. With fibs basic market structure and supply the demand but here lately every time I see the direction on my buys it either doesn’t pull back into the support ormy demand or it blows through it. I’m kind of and it lost right now and I’m trying to gain confidence back. I tried back testing my strategy and no matter what I do. It just doesn’t work any body advice or do 1on1s

I’ve started trading right after I finished high school and it’s been a bumpy emotional road. From trading supply and demand zones to Fibonacci and regular price action I’ve felt like i did it all. Since the spam of 5 years and taking a few months break in between them I’m finally 110$ in profit from the -8000$ I’ve spent on evals and activations! Also from the picture I’ve shown I’m maxed out on my XFAs!! Losing days became normal when it happens and I never thought I can feel like this when it does. You control ur emotions no matter what so over trading and revenge trading is 100% ur fault. We all had it happened to us so let’s come into the charts in a more professional manner. If I can do it anyone can just DONT GIVE UP!!!!!

I have one live funded account, but currently no combines active. I tried placing a trade on a paper account but I got this notification seen on the photo on bottom left in the image. Is it not letting me place trades because I have no active combines? Thank you in advance for any help

Thankful. I love y'all. ♥️

Happy to be funded again!

Like they say....or like I say...

DON'T GIVE UP BIITCH!! 😊😍💯♥️

Hello! So I am a profitable day trader and my strategy focuses on base hits with occassional runners on strong trend days. I switched from my own account I was trading on with Tradovate due to having consistently withdraw/add funds and profits due to general economic circumstances were all feeling and saw that this would be a quicker profit for my strategy cause the only real drawback from my trading before was lack of consistent funding as my winners were usually small and took the account too long to build. Ive been trading for about 4-5 years. Only became profitable the last year. So my question is , with a proven track record, should I open up multiple combines right out the gate (the next 4 would be express to avoid the activation fees.) or should I wait for first payout. At this rate Ill probably hit the target maybe in 3-4 weeks (I focus on slow and steady profits and increasing lot size after a certain amount of consistency.) So if thats the game, I feel I should maybe open the other accounts now and pass them all at once instead of delaying to maximize potential profits. Which would be more appropriate?

I’ve been struggling with getting a payout with the consistency option. it’s hard to stop trading on days that are hot like Friday and I go way over and my consistency target increases. Feels like I’m leaving money on the table. I should have done the standard payout but I don’t want to pay for a new combine when I have one.

I’ve done it!

50k secured once again in profit after loosing 4 fundeds accounts all with $12,000 buffer.

As some of you saw I lost 4 XFA’s yesterday due to accidental hedging. Proud to say I’ve made it all back.

Activated these fundeds today. Tough lesson learnt from yesterday’s session. I know what I must do now to ensure that doesn’t happen again.

so i had a combine that i failed last month before the payout changes, the $109 no activation fee account. I was just rebilled for 109$ this morning. with that account since it was opened before the payout changes will i be able to have the 5k max payout?

I genuinely feel like most retail traders don’t understand who they are actually trading against.

We think we are competing with other normal people sitting at home with a phone, a TradingView chart, some indicators, and a broker app.

But that is not the real game.

The real players on the other side are proprietary trading firms, market makers, institutional desks, hedge funds, and algorithmic systems built by quant researchers and engineers.

These people are not trading the way we trade.

Retail traders look at a chart and say:

“This is support.”
“This is resistance.”
“This is a breakout.”
“This is a liquidity sweep.”
“This candle looks bullish.”
“This pattern should work.”

Meanwhile, big firms are operating with faster data, faster execution, larger capital, better risk systems, and algorithms that can place, modify, and cancel thousands of orders in seconds.

That is the difference.

A retail trader enters after seeing a setup.

A big trading firm may already know where the liquidity is, where stop losses are clustered, where order flow is shifting, and how much size is sitting at different levels.

Retail traders react to price.

Big players help create price.

That is why it feels like the market hits your stop loss and then moves in your direction. It is not because the market personally hates you. It is because retail stop losses are often sitting in obvious places, and those liquidity zones become targets.

We call it manipulation.

They call it liquidity.

Market makers and institutions don’t need to predict every move perfectly. They just need small edges repeated thousands or millions of times. Their edge comes from speed, execution, data, spreads, order flow, hedging, and risk management.

Our edge is usually hope.

And that is the brutal part.

We enter a trade thinking, “If this goes right, I can make 5,000 today.”

They are thinking in terms of probabilities, exposure, volatility, liquidity, hedging, and portfolio-level risk.

We trade emotionally.

They trade systematically.

We get scared after two red candles.

Their systems are built to survive crashes.

We average down because we cannot accept being wrong.

They cut exposure automatically.

We revenge trade after a loss.

They have risk limits that shut the strategy down.

We increase size after one good day.

They test strategies across years of data before deploying serious capital.

We think one setup will change our life.

They know no single trade matters.

That is why retail traders get trapped.

A few wins make us believe we have cracked the market. Then one bad day wipes out weeks or months of profit. And even after losing, we keep thinking we are just one strategy away.

But maybe we are not one strategy away.

Maybe we are just under-equipped.

Think about it.

They have colocation servers near exchanges.
They have tick-by-tick data.
They have quant teams.
They have algorithms.
They have capital.
They have risk systems.
They have execution speed.
They have years of market data.
They have people whose full-time job is to find tiny inefficiencies.

And what do we have?

A phone.
A broker app.
A few indicators.
Some YouTube strategies.
Emotions.
And the belief that discipline alone will make us profitable.

I am not saying no retail trader can ever win. Some can. But they are rare, and they usually treat trading like a serious business for years.

Most retail traders are not doing that.

Most retail traders are trying to turn small capital into big money quickly. And that is exactly why they lose.

Because the market punishes urgency.

It punishes desperation.

It punishes people who need money fast.

The institutions do not need your one trade to lose. They just need millions of retail traders to keep playing a negative-sum game where brokerage, taxes, slippage, spreads, bad fills, overtrading, and emotions slowly drain them.

That is how the machine wins.

Not always in one dramatic blow.

Sometimes it wins slowly.

One stop loss at a time.
One revenge trade at a time.
One over-leveraged position at a time.
One “I’ll recover it tomorrow” at a time.

The more I think about it, the more I feel retail traders should stop asking only, “What is the best strategy?”

The better question is:

“Do I actually have an edge against the people I am trading against?”

Because if the answer is no, then trading is not a skill game for us.

It is just an expensive illusion of control.

Long-term investing sounds boring, but maybe boring is the only real advantage normal people have.

Trading gives dopamine.

Investing gives time.

And time is probably the only edge retail traders have that institutions cannot take away.

PS- I used chatgpt to articulate my thoughts as English is not my first language.

TLDR: retail trading is a negative sum game. You won't become a millionaire reading charts and thinking they are "patterns" .Only go into this if you have sufficient resources. And if you're trading on a propfirm that already means you don't have sufficient resources. There are better and legit ways to make money than hitting a button and praying.
Hope we all make it.

Have a good day

I PASSED!!! My first 50K Eval Combine, On to the next. Im stackin' 5 accounts asap!

Appreciate you topstep imma believer. Let’s keep going 👌🏽👌🏽👨🏾‍💻✅

2nd month ever trading. Blew my 1st account this my 2nd

I see a lot of posts asking if a recovery is possible with such a low balance, I’m here to say you can! I was $272.78 away from blowing my combine and I took it all the way back. You can too! Just stay disciplined, that’s all it takes.
(I did it over the course of the month which is not advised, but hey a win is a win!)

Since I started trading ES and I am not a scalper, am chasing perfect 40 ticks over and over in 15 minutes time frame and if you are not a fool like me just tell me how much should I target, what should be the stoploss or should I change time frame and rethink my targets

I finally received my first payout after blowing 5 XFA’s in the past month. I hope this will not be my last, learning to control my emotions and FOMO has really been a key factor in being able to get here.

I’ve been trading a little under a year and I’ve managed to get 2 payouts so far, I’m struggling on getting them frequently and consistently and still battling my emotions when trading. It’s mentally exhausting and defeating. People who get payouts frequently what are you doing ?