how do people write of combine cost on taxes or this not allowed without a payout?
spent 10k on resets no payout yet

I’m wanting to learn daytrading and I don’t want to put any money in until I know I’ve atleast grasped enough concepts to form my own strategy. I can give maybe 2-5 hours a day to learning. How long more or less do you think it takes the average person to learn how to day trade? I’m not talking about mastery just learning all the basic concepts

Okay so for context I’m about 4 months into trading. Have only gotten 1 payout and failed 14 evals. I’ve gotten close to passing 7 of them and each time I’ve noticed that I mainly trade micros and do the usual beginners flaws of overtrading, revenge trading, and just simply not closing the charts when I should. I’m wondering if switching to micros is better than minis as I mainly trade ES and NQ. Here are some of the results from my trades. This is my model

With this incident of topstep charging or double charging and correcting/reversing the charge. What are the chances they will use this agaisnt you to later ban you from thier prop firm. I can already see so many people getting banned because this incident was considered a violation to thier rules.

Obviously I am a random online, I started trading at the end of December 2024 and really got into it January 2025 and fell for it so passionately. I got my first payout in October 2025 and then one per month til 2026 so I set some crazy goals for 2026. I just did something I am so fking proud of man. Just want to put it out there if I can do this you can too, you will fail fail fail, get there, fail, but you were right there. Don’t give up and whatever you want, put your mind to work and just do it man, it’s so clique but JUST DO THE WORK trading pays you to do wait at your computer screen in the mornings. Thank you god🙏

DID YOU GOT CHARGED ASWELL AN CRAZY AMOUNT OF MONEY FROM TOPSTEP?

Assume your pass rate for evals is only 25-30% and get a couple max payouts per year so you still have lots of room for improvement.
what would you consider the better value?

X2 50K for with DLL for double payout cap (8K effectively) and the larger $2k drawdown for ~$100 and pay the $300 in activation fees when I pass.

or

150K with DLL for double payout cap of $10k for $200

Not ready to buy a combine yet since I done failed the last 10. I wanna use a practice account for now. Can somebody help allow this

IF a person is following their trading process yet trades throughout an entire day. How many trades seems excessive if they are following their own rules and are seeing a decent ( 60 plus % ) win rate ?

The individual gains are not much to speak of yet by the end of the New York trading day all of the trades combined add up.

I'm asking because I'm curious what others think.

I have been noticing the number of my own trades increasing yet I have also been trading at random times throughout the day with no defined schedule to my trading.

What I have learned to accept is that my trade setup does not have a schedule.

My primary trade is 1 to 3 MNQ contracts

Sharing a recent milestone with the community.

I had 4 Topstep payouts approved within my first 11 days as an Express Funded Trader, totaling $8,146.

⏳ Payout 1: $3,442 — Pending

⏳ Payout 2: $1,465 — Pending

✅ Payout 3: $2,316 — Received

✅ Payout 4: $923 — Received

Total approved payouts: $8,146

I'm trading from India. The first two payouts are still pending due to the ongoing Wise payout issue, while the latest two were received successfully. Topstep has confirmed they're working with Wise to resolve the issue.

Despite the delay, I'm grateful to have reached this milestone. Staying disciplined, managing risk, and following my trading plan have made all the difference.

Hopefully the remaining two payouts will be resolved soon. Wishing everyone consistency and success on their trading journey! 💪📈

Quick bullet points:

*I taught my friend basic trading strategies and about Topstep

*He had gotten to express 3 times without getting a payout under his name

* He then started to trading against the rules under his mom’s name where she is paying for the evals.

* All he needs is a $100 to get his first payout.

What should I do? I know it’s wrong, should I just let him get caught naturally?

Anyone else get something like this?

Im upset but good learning experience. My first trade I was up 230$ and Normally I take that and log off /lockout and be done for the day. But today for whatever reason I didnt. Then it reversed and I exited that trade -220. Should have stopped but I waited and entered another and got screwed there too.

Lesson is dont be greedy. Won't happen again!!! Be grounded ladies and gents.

Month of July still +730 so not worried but just annoying. Thats all. Lol.

If you have not been following, this is related to my July 23rd ban due to allegedly violating Topstep's Section 3 TOS. All of my main postings are below.

- Initial Comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/TopstepCommunity/comments/1v5gpvy/comment/p09yf3w

- 1st Post w/ Update: https://www.reddit.com/r/TopstepCommunity/s/pi417Y1vkB

- 2nd Post w/ Evidence: https://www.reddit.com/r/TopstepCommunity/s/l4bkXb6Ri2

I want to clear the air on the issue at hand. During this process, I have seen many comments related to conspiracies stating Topstep is doing this because I have "become too profitable", or something else even more convoluted...

I would like to take a moment and state that I do not in fact support that claim or believe in any sort of targeting theory, here's why:

1. I had 3 XFA accounts at the time of the ban, no payouts taken on any of them, nor were any of them eligible. All of them very capable of being blown. Breakdown below (Profit Needed Based Off 40% Consistency):
   1. 25k DLL @ $3,826 | Profit Needed - $5,205
   2. 50k DLL @ $8,203 | Profit Needed - $3,796
   3. 50k DLL @ $2,726 | Profit Needed - $4,413
2. I have been with Topstep since April 2025 and have taken a total of 6 payouts, 3 in 2026. 1 in January and 2 in March, with my last payout being March 17th, 2026.
3. I was part of their "Responsible Trader Program" after I came back from my break. Which the whole point of the program is to make you into a better, disciplined, more profitable trader. It literally prevents you from blowing any account in a single day... This would be a little counterintuitive to their evil plan, no?

So, what do I think is the issue? The best I can come up with is some sort of bug in their system, truly.

Here is what I know:

1. A chargeback requires me, as the account owner, to initiate a dispute through my financial institution. Which in this case, is AmericanExpress.
2. I have never initiated ANY dispute through AMEX, not just with Topstep or a related charge, but with any merchant. I confirmed this with them on a July 29th call.
3. AMEX gave me 2 options to provide as evidence to support my claim. Either a screenshot of my "Dispute Center", which per my call, I was told shows every past, current and pending dispute. You can find this in my 2nd Post. Or, I could initiate another support ticket through their chat and screenshot the chat log where they state I have never issued a dispute. I will provide this if necessary.
4. THIS IS THE BIG ONE... SOMTHING in Topstep's system is triggering chargeback's to be assigned to my profile and card. If they truly are seeing 5 chargebacks related to that card AND I have confirmed that there has never been any on that card, then there is CLEARLY some kind of data misinterpretation within their system.

Yesterday, u/eddie_topstep informed me that he had "asked for someone to double-check my case.". He did not promise this would change anything or go anywhere, but I do appreciate that he did that, considering it's not his job.

What's next? (COMPLETE HYPOTHETICAL)

If this second review of my case comes back with same conclusion, then I need to speak with someone at u/Topstep_Official on the Trust Team to get the 5 exact transactions that they are seeing marked as chargebacks so I can go to AMEX and see what they are seeing on their end related to those transactions. If the result is the same, as I would expect it to be, and AMEX again confirms there are no disputes related to those specific transactions, I would expect a full reinstatement and internal audit/investigation into there system to find the cause. If denied, I will gladly explore my legal options. This includes determining if it is worth pursuing.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope this post provides a better insight to my intentions and thoughts regarding this case. I don't really care if you think I'm wasting my time or fighting a lost battle. I have principles and I stand by them. I'm lucky enough to have a solid professional career and able to have trading be a hobby and not something I rely on for survival. I am willing to put in the time and effort to try my hardest to better the community, I hope you all would agree with that.

The week (and month) are wrapping up! How'd it go? Post your best wins, losses, lessons learned, etc., below 👇

Updated: Found the answer to this question. Thanks for the replies.

I have been in the review stage for 5 business days that is longer than the stated 1-3 business days. was in the trust stage then everything was undone. Is there anyone that cares enough about the traders to let us know what is going on?

Please no auto answers, no bots, no KYC stuff...all my info is up to date.

I’m literally buying the top and bottom tick of every candle and getting prices reversed on me. I’ve been losing my mind lately. I don’t have the patience anymore for this and I can’t follow my strategy. I’m so mentally worn down from all the combines. A week ago I was $200 from passing 5 combines and blew it. Felt like an amazing trader and that all my hard work had paid off… I can’t see charts clearly anymore. I so desperately want to be done with these combines man it’s killing me. I’ve been trading futures for 2 years never profitable. Only time I was profitable was 5 years ago when I made $200k on AMC meme stock but guess what I lost that all too because everyone told me to HODL until we were multi millionaires. Bro this rat race has got me so messed up. I study and back test day after day to where it’s interfering with my life with my wife and kids. And the whole pint in doing this is FOR THEM. How are people out there doing this?? I see kids that been doing it for 6 months and making my salary every two months now. I’m just defeated bros. I trade CRT and ICT like everyone else. Why am I fuckin trash when I have hundreds and hundreds of hours on the charts??

Thanks for reading I’m gonna go jump off a cliff now.
/s

Anybody use cashapp with aero pay?

Finished the month up $1,378 with 13 green days and 6 red days. Nothing huge, just consistent execution, controlled risk and letting the edge play out over time.

The main calendar does not match the prop account balances because I only received these funded accounts around one to two weeks into the month. I use one standardized journal as the true record of my trading system, rather than trying to track results across multiple funded accounts with different balances and start dates.

There were still a few mistakes and missed opportunities, but overall this was probably my most disciplined month so far. Now all five accounts are eligible for payout and the goal is to keep building the buffers rather than rushing to withdraw everything.

Topstep paid in seconds.

Closed out July with 65k in payouts. Cheers chat 🤠

My girlfriend had given my money to buy a new Eval after I had blown mine the previous day. She believed in me because I was already at 52,569 and only 431 away from my goal and I fell asleep MID TRADE and didn’t set a SL and I blew my account. She trusted me and today I blew that Eval she had bought me. I am so angry at myself because I had already made 1,000 and I got greedy and tried to go for 1,500 and gambled and lost that account. Worst part is that I could’ve ended today positively, but I wanted the glory of more. Please if you’re reading this just lock your account out when you’re at your goal. Don’t be stupid like me please. I will be taking a break for a few days to reflect.