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Due to the ask me anything thread being closed, I thought I'd start a thread to ask about people's past and present experiences with Topstep.
I've heard good and bad things about them recently, so am interested to hear experiences and opinions.
For me there are pros and cons.
Pros:
Wide range of platforms, including Tradovate and their own TopstepX platform.
Clear and concise rules.
Easy payout process, only 5 days of $200 profit.
Customer service seems friendly and professional, especially compared to competitors(Apex).
Cons:
Relatively expensive compared to the competition, don't seem to run promos very often.
1 micro = 1 mini at Topstep, which is absurd, and makes trading the funded accounts challenging due to the scaling rule.
Scaling rule on funded accounts, I think it's 2 or 3 contracts when you start out.
Daily loss limit on account that never disappears. I.e on competitors your account balance can act as drawdown once past the threshold, but not on Topstep. So no opportunity to scale up account and use larger contract sizes.
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I joined Topstep on Friday and passed the Combine on Monday. I'd say it's one of the easier challenges to pass. The end-of-day drawdown means you can build a buffer early, then take bigger risks later in the day without blowing the account. On Friday, my last trade would have blown if the account had trailing drawdown, but it was OK on Topstep's daily drawdown. I've listed all the trades I took to pass at https://ticks-in-flow.blogspot.com/2024/06/passing-my-first-topstep-combine.html
I'm on holiday for 2 weeks so won't be trading the XFA until I get back. The no-consistency rule and daily drawdown should allow for some interesting trade strategies:
1. Build the account to gain the max 5 contracts.
2. During the London session prior to a big US news release, build a daily buffer.
3. Take an educated guess on news, using the buffer built in the London session to protect the account.
My Rithmic accounts took around 7 hours to activate. I opened a support ticket after 2 hours of waiting. I still haven't had any reply, so my experience with Topstep support has not been good.
Yeah it does seem that the only way to trade larger sizes is to build a buffer each day. I'm not too keen on trading the London session, even though I'm in the UK, just because the volume is so low now. I know it's possible to make money on some days, but I've had mixed results. Still, it seems a good idea to get a buffer ready for the US open to trade heavier contract sizes. It's a shame that the daily loss limit never disappears on Topstep, that's one of the main drawbacks IMO as these accounts are never truly scalable.
You're not the only one who's had communication issues with them. They have that infuriating bot as the only way to contact them now, and then it says that support will get back to you and it sometimes takes days. I'm not sure why they think it's a good idea for their customer service to fall off a cliff, and TBH it puts me off using them.
I agree with you. Their competitors do, but this issue has clearly never been much of a priority for Topstep. I remember that @bobwest and I discussed it openly with their representative here, years ago. As I recall, they agreed it was a little anomalous but said it would be time-consuming and/or labour-intensive to amend, and they kind of admitted they weren’t exactly prioritising it.
When I was funded with Earn2trade it was a similar thing. I think it was a limitation of the Rithmic Risk Management system rather than something the prop firms wanted to implement.
TopStep has notoriously one of the worst supports. They'll take 2 days to get back to you with a precanned template response that doesn't address your question.
That really surprises me a lot. You'd think with all the increase in competition that there is, these days, that would be the one area in which they'd take the most care to make customer experience good.
Especially as it's so easy for people to post in forums saying what you've just said.
Really surprising. I remember the days (not so long ago!) when Topstep was the company all the "recent competitors" tried to copy: some of them even copied Topstep's website word-for-word, over many pages. They certainly had "first mover advantage" in the funding-company marketplace.
You're not the only person I've heard/seen saying that, or something very like it, anyway. It's really surprising to me to hear that Topstep (of whom I've never really had a bad opinion in the past, and whose business I thought had quite a bit to be commended on) have let their customer support slip so much. Puzzling!
