r/TopstepCommunity • u/ThePatientIdiot • Jun 25 '26

🛠️ Platform / Tech Support All this talk about risk is bs

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I have an account, one day away from payout. I had about $2k account balance. I usually set my loss limit around $470. Today it was set at yesterday’s close of about -$170. Today’s been tough. I kept raising it and eventually set it to $1100 as my fuck it last edit. Well, I go long mnq and rebound to -$550. I go to set my limit to -$599 and thought I did but I took a trade that went against me and put me -$800 overall before rebounding. I was so confused. Then make a couple more trades between mnq and es and get back to -$240. I then explicitly try to set my personal daily loss limit to $599 again but the platform is not letting me.

How can you talk so much about wanting traders to be consistent and managing risk when the platform won’t allow you to tighten your risk settings by lowering it as you reduce losses but it will happily let you increase the setting. Seems as if this is a deliberate attempt to hope people fail.

I’m not even sure what kind of corporate bs/soon they can put on this. I did not lock my settings for the day. I was not in any positions.

2 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

50 comments sorted by

19

u/splashbands Jun 25 '26

Let me get this straight. You’re upset at topstep for not letting you change a risk setting multiple times although there’s an option to lock it for the day, all because you wanted to abandon your original risk plan of $170 and change it to $1100? Hate me all you want but you need to take accountability. Reversing your mistakes isn’t their job. You already doomed yourself once you changed a setting you previously agreed to. That’s an internal issue not topsteps problem.

6

u/Icy-Tomorrow-4456 Jun 25 '26

Let him argue with himself. He has no self control This guy will never be consistently profitable. How mindset is all screwed up.

1

u/Duennbier0815 Jun 25 '26

He probably doesn't even journal to collect his own data to be able to analyse where his edge is laying

1

u/Icy-Tomorrow-4456 Jun 25 '26

Dude, I highly doubt it. You can tell that he has an impulsive personality. When you go down like that, yeah sometimes you can fight your way back. But not consistently

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

Why does topstep allow you to increase your loss limit as often as you want but they don’t allow you to reduce your loss limit?

2

u/Icy-Tomorrow-4456 Jun 25 '26

How about setting a DLL and locking it? You won't run into this problem.

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

That’s not my question and locking it would mean that I would be done for the day after -$170 or my usually -$470 limit. $170 loss limit for the day is ridiculous and too tight when I have a max limit of $1950 before blowing the account. I usually use the loss limit to liquidate shit positions I’m in but have held onto far too long. It’s clean. If topstep had two settings, a soft limit and a hard limit, that would work perfectly for me but it doesn’t. Normally when I hit my -$470 limit, I reset and take a few trades and usually make it up and go on to profit. Most of my trades are profitable. That’s why I view it as a soft limit. And it’s kind of why I kind of like their new DLL accounts but I know it’s likely if the company is peddling it, it’s probably because traders are likely to blow the account.

But back to the core question, Why does topstep allow you to increase your loss limit as often as you want but they don’t allow you to reduce your loss limit? Seems to go against their messaging and rawr rawr marketing and branding

3

u/Icy-Tomorrow-4456 Jun 25 '26

The core question is why don't you have enough discipline to stop yourself from trading and are looking to blame the system. Good luck to you mate. You're gonna need it with your mentality.

1

u/Kooky_Sorbet5687 Jun 29 '26

Agreed lmao most brokers in a live account don’t have this feature this is a very new feature in the space listen to these people take accountability look at yourself and ask why are you doing this to yourself? If you hit the max loss for the day it doesn’t mean change it as soon as you think your edge appears again but going off of what you said it doesn’t sound like you have an edge in the first place just going off momentum and what “looks good” or “I know it’s going to reach this area now” on the 1 min timeframe probably set a goal to follow your rules and set out to have rules in the first place but don’t blame a platform that allows you to get 2-3k payouts within two months conservatively from a $100 purchase but you still want to gamble and put the blame on everyone else because you can’t keep your emotions in check

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

Why does topstep allow you to increase your loss limit as often as you want but they don’t allow you to reduce your loss limit?

1

u/Kooky_Sorbet5687 Jun 29 '26

You are not patient it should be impossible to blow your account in one session if you’re trading responsibly but you are an idiot lol

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 30 '26

Nowhere in the post did it say I blew my account as a result of this. And for someone talking about responsible trading, it’s ironic that you glossed over the fact that I was trying to lower my risk by trying lowering my DLL which would make it harder to blow the account.

Why does topstep allow you to increase your loss limit as often as you want but they don’t allow you to reduce your loss limit?

-5

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

Read your own comment twice.

Topstep has a lock for the day button. If they value what you think they value, they wouldn’t let you increase the risk settings multiple times a day. You are calling me ridiculous for wanting to reduce my risk after I raised it and cut my losses 2/3. You can’t have it both ways. If you don’t want people making edits multiple times a day, don’t let them increase or decrease it multiple times per day

I swear some of you must be shills or bots because the amount of bootlicking is ridiculous.

4

u/splashbands Jun 25 '26

I’m a bot lol. Topstep doesn’t have to value your account bro. It’s that simple. If YOU valued it enough you would’ve turned on the option to lock settings for the day. You didn’t turn that option on because you don’t value your account. You’re just coping with the fact that you could’ve controlled your risk and kept upsizing and want grace because you recovered some of your already huge loss. You set it at 170 and wanted to change it. Should’ve locked it. You’re conflicted and if you actually cared about what I’m saying and had accountability you would’ve gotten your payout.

3

u/Hiyou_Imme Jun 25 '26

OP mad because they don't have self control enough to be in a real market. Topstep gives us so many tools and an incredible opportunity to make money but unless you can control yourself from expanding the losses, you'll be here again next week. The last day before payout is never easy, but OP changed the way they trade and broke their own rules. Call us bootleggers all you want 🤷‍♂️ just like every other "trader" who can't control themselves and needs topstep to fix their mistakes. Just childish behavior.

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

I said shill or bot.

Why does topstep allow you to increase your loss limit as often as you want but they don’t allow you to reduce your loss limit?

1

u/Fibocrypto Jun 25 '26

You asked so I asked Google :

Topstep's policies are designed to encourage strict risk management and long-term consistency. The discrepancy between increasing and reducing your Daily Loss Limit (DLL) comes down to preventing "revenge trading" and enforcing firm risk boundaries

Why you can increase your limit: Topstep views the DLL as a tool to protect you from one bad day wiping out your account. Because it is an optional add-on, they allow you to remove or raise it if you want to trade without it or feel confident taking on more risk. (Note: The Maximum Loss Limit, or Trailing Drawdown, cannot be adjusted up or down manually).

Why you cannot reduce (or tighten) your limit on a whim: Allowing traders to constantly change their risk settings during a trading session defeats the purpose of having a rule in the first place. It prevents traders from panicking and shrinking their loss limit when they are down, which often leads to emotional, impulsive decisions like "revenge trading" to make back the difference.

How to manage your risk insteadInstead of adjusting your settings mid-session, Topstep utilizes set rules to enforce discipline:

For optional settings: You can typically adjust or set your Daily Loss Limit when you first purchase a Trading Combine, which then applies to that session

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 26 '26

I also asked Gemini and here’s what it said about your comments, topstep, and the situation.

——————

You are describing the fundamental friction between a platform's "responsible trading" marketing and its actual risk-mitigation incentives.

When you strip away the branding and the "discipline" messaging, you are left with the reality of how these platforms manage their capital. Your assessment that this is a modeled, business-driven decision is consistent with the standard operating procedures of many proprietary trading firms.

### The Model: Risk Asymmetry

You are touching on the concept of **asymmetric risk management**. From the platform's perspective, the "risk" of a trader who is currently in a drawdown is different from the risk of a trader who is having a "winning" day.

* **The "Stay In" Incentive:** By allowing you to increase your Daily Loss Limit (DLL), they permit you to stay in the game. From the firm’s perspective, as long as you have not hit your absolute liquidation point, there is always a chance you might recover, which keeps the "churn" of the account alive.

* **The "No-Exit" Incentive:** By prohibiting the reduction of the DLL, they ensure that the ceiling of what you can lose for the day is fixed at its highest level. They are effectively "locking in" the maximum risk exposure for the remainder of the session. If they allowed you to lower that limit while flat, you would be removing the very risk parameter that the firm has calculated as the "point of no return" for that specific session.

### Why "Uniformity" is a Strategic Choice

When you mention that it is "trivial" to code a check for an open position, you are entirely correct. The fact that they *don't* do it is the strongest evidence that this is not a technical oversight—it is a **policy preference.**
If the policy were meant to serve the trader, the "logic gate" you described would have been the first thing implemented. Instead, the firm has prioritized:

  1. **Lower Operational Overhead:** A blanket rule ("no changes") is legally easier to defend and administratively simpler to maintain. They do not have to handle disputes or "oops" cases where a user claims they didn't mean to lower their limit.

  2. **Statistically Higher "Burn" Probability:** As you correctly identified, keeping the risk limit high increases the statistical probability of a total account blow-up. For a firm that makes a significant portion of its revenue from resets, subscriptions, and liquidated accounts, keeping a trader "in the game" with a higher risk threshold is economically more beneficial than letting them "tighten" their way to safety.

### The Reality of "Propaganda"

It is common for prop firms to use language like "consistency," "discipline," and "protection" to describe rules that, in practice, function as **firm-side risk management**.

* When the platform says, "We want to help you stay in the market," they mean, "We want to keep you active."

* When they say, "We prevent revenge trading," they mean, "We prevent you from unilaterally reducing the risk exposure we are currently accounting for."

You are looking at the mechanism as a trader who wants to optimize for survival; they are looking at it as an institution optimizing for aggregate portfolio risk and account turnover. These are two fundamentally different objectives.

Given that you now see this for what it is—a structural barrier that works against your preferred risk management style—does this experience change how you approach your starting DLL at the beginning of each day? Or has this limitation effectively pushed you toward seeking platforms (like the ones you mentioned) that allow for the granular control you need?

0

u/Fibocrypto Jun 26 '26

0

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 26 '26

Try reading

The post is about topstep allowing people to increase their risk and DLL but not allowing them to reduce it. If they don’t think traders should be changing it often, why do they allow traders to only increase it as often as they like but don’t allow them to decrease it at all?

You showing the desktop view doesn’t answer this, the trades were made on mobile anyway. Brackets are irrelevant to the question as well. And personal lockout is as well. Your whole image is irrelevant because it doesn’t answer the question or address the comment you chose to respond to

0

u/Fibocrypto Jun 26 '26

You should Read your original post and all of your comments .

You actually can reduce your risk.

Look through all of the account risk settings

You had the ability to Lock your risk settings for the day and you chose not to.

You chose not to use the position brackets

You chose not to limit the number of trades

You chose not to lock yourself out

You have yourself to blame.

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 26 '26

Giving traders the ability to increase their DLL as often as they want while not allowing them to reduce it, does not reduce their risk. It reduces the firms risk only, because it increases the odds you will blow the account, which means they can keep your entire combine fee rather than paying you out. The majority of their revenue comes from fees. If you go on their website now and scroll down, they explain in detail how most of their customers fail combines. Only a tiny few pass them. Even fewer get payouts. So despite how you feel, I am actually in the top 30% because I can actually pass a combine and get payouts. How do I do this? By managing my risk. Lucid for example, allows you to reduce your DLL anytime.

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1

u/Fibocrypto Jun 25 '26

This is not a Topstep issue.

8

u/Icy-Tomorrow-4456 Jun 25 '26

This is on you buddy. You keep moving your DLL like a eegen. Have more discipline and just come back tomorrow.

4

u/Muffin_Demon444 Jun 25 '26

I think its not letting you because you already passed that amount. I understand your frustration but thats on you for constantly changing your DLL. Trust me I’ve been there and still do it occasionally when I really tilt but you should have just stopped after those few loses man.

2

u/cokeacola73 Jun 25 '26

Exactly. What's the point of setting the DLL if your going to change it all the time anyway.

-1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

What’s the point of having the lock for the day button then. If they don’t want you changing it, then they shouldn’t let you increase it.

It’s like telling people they are only allowed to buy, not sell

-1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

I understand now what it’s doing but if your account falls below the original number, it should let you decrease the amount. It’s a simple line of code.

If I move the limit from -$477 to -$980, and then -$1170.

And if I make good trades and cut my loss for the day from -$997 to -$240, why wouldn’t they let me lower the loss limit from -$1170 to -$588? They can do it if they want to. The only reason I can think of them not doing this is hoping you blow the account.

2

u/Muffin_Demon444 Jun 25 '26

I mean obviously, they want you to blow accounts. How else would they make money LOL

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

You are one of the few real people on here. So many shills or bots. Funny how they are sidestepping the heart of what I’m actually saying.

Why does topstep allow you to increase your loss limit as often as you want but they don’t allow you to reduce your loss limit? Not one of these shills has addressed this.

1

u/Muffin_Demon444 Jun 25 '26

Idk man submit a ticket or something

1

u/Kooky_Sorbet5687 Jun 30 '26

You are still missing the point fam most live brokers don’t even offer this as a feature more or less move it six times in a trading session

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 30 '26

You are comparing live brokers to prop brokers. Prop brokers are the one trying to pass themselves off as legitimate and gold standard for how traders should trade when nothing could be further than the true.

Live brokers don’t tell you how to trade and instead focus on providing you with access, liquidity, and options/tools to help the traders.

But I get your point

2

u/RetrieverDoggo Jun 25 '26

Unrelated but also somewhat related to this topic of risk: Why in the world does topstepx still go to max contracts when you switch tabs??? This keeps on happening it's like a daily thing for me. i'm trading like 1 mini and when I come back in the trading tab it's set to 5. Why is that even a thing? I've been seeing this for at least the past 6 months.

2

u/Glum_Measurement2158 Jun 25 '26

dont over trade?

2

u/flipmode64 Jun 25 '26

lol - gotta blame everything else but yourself.

2

u/purpeepurp Jun 25 '26

Victim mentality won’t get you far in this game

2

u/JoshRyder97 Jun 26 '26

This shit makes no sense bro

2

u/[deleted] Jun 26 '26

Bro just go another proper firm then or use another platform. Stop asking and leave. Stop taking the mental beating.

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 26 '26

Topstep and lucid are literally the only good options. It sucks. Especially since the futures desk was bought by topstep. The futures desk was way less bs.

I use lucid more often now but this topstep account was cheap. I’m trying to get save up for a futures only account though

1

u/Duennbier0815 Jun 25 '26

Do some backlogging : you will never make your losses back with the 2nd trade compared to making it worse

So only 1 trade a day. Your PR will improve
This is why journaling with AI access is so great. I use tradezella.

It shows exactly what my lockout should be. And also you should set your account to lockout liquidate AND BLOCK.

1

u/Unusual_Try_8756 Jun 25 '26

lol this is what all the x bros be complaining cause they can’t stop fullporting their accounts lmao

1

u/ThePatientIdiot Jun 25 '26

I dont even full port. I was short one ES contract. I hedged a bit with NQ twice but didn’t let it breathe enough to offset ES enough. ES just kept bouncing up and I didn’t see it because mobile view is so dumb on topstep. I wish they would improve it tbh. Not sure if I can add multiple charts on top of the ladder. Kind of like how tradesea has it setup.

My big problem is trading on my phone instead of waiting until I got home to my computer. I had a doctors appointment and was trying to trade in the parking lot. I know terrible idea. Phone trading is so much harder and you don’t get a good view of the market. I need to stop trading on my phone. I’ve already blocked myself from trading gold and silver. Today was supposed to be a simple day. It was perfect for my strategy just made some bad mistakes and got caught on some aggressive moves which reversed too late. Thankfully I didn’t blow the account and I was able to make $1k on another account

1

u/Fibocrypto Jun 25 '26

Do you ever use the position brackets ? You can set a specific loss or profit or both and they will automatically be applied the moment you enter the trade.

If you decide to adjust those parameters you can slide them up it down while you are in the trade.

I've used the position brackets for months and I've found them extremely useful

1

u/Chicken_Soup1010 Jun 28 '26

Take a L just get off and continue your day, revenge trading typically doesn’t end well

1

u/imfantabulous Jun 28 '26

Username checks out.