Topstep’s Risk & Compliance team regularly reviews accounts for trading that reflects excessive, gambling-like behavior, to maintain the integrity of our simulated environment, and guide our traders away from strategies that aren’t realistic for earning long-term in the live markets. Our goal is to properly prepare you for the big leagues and make you a better trader that can not only profit, but successfully manage risk.
To minimize this behavior, we ask traders to keep their maximum amount of contracts in a day to 200 or less. Anything additional will be flagged and reviewed by our team, and we may reach out and ask that you adjust your trading.*
*This may result in trading day deletions and in repeat cases restarts or accounts closures
Q: Why have you not made an announcement about this?
This is a policy, not a rule, and impacts less than 1% of our traders. We didn’t want to unnecessarily worry the majority of our traders who do not exhibit excessive trading. Due to it being a policy, your account is not automatically deemed ineligible when this is exceeded—first we will send a notice to slow down to avoid overtrading as well as delete the day in question, as overtrading can create bad habits and gambling-type behavior. If we continue to see this type of trading, we may delete additional days, but more often will reset the account. We need consistently profitable traders at our funded level, and we have found that traders who use this style are not successful long term.
Q: Why is 200+ considered excessive?
We want our traders taking only the best trading setups, and whether you are trading 1 contract or 10 contracts at a time, there really aren’t that many exceptional trading opportunities during any given session. In most cases, trading more than 200 contracts per day can be perceived as excessive trading or gambling. When trading live, transactional costs on 200 contracts for a product like NQ can run a trader anywhere from $416 in fees and commissions up to $460. Such a high cost can make losing days that much more painful as well as eat into nice winning days. The very best traders are selective with assuming risk, and we want to ensure our traders are taking only the best trading opportunities.
Q: Why is this not a rule?
Since we only see this type of behavior from 1% of our users, we are reaching out on a case-by-case basis to promote better trading habits, so we have the best traders at our Funded Level. This manual review allows us to give guidance from our experts based on the history of your trading.
Q: Why is this not on my dashboard?
Since we only see this type of excessive trading less than 1% of our traders, we don’t want this policy to be a main focus for everyone. We instead reach out on a case-by-case basis to promote better trading habits, so we have the best traders at our Funded Level. This manual review allows us to give guidance from our experts based on the history of your trading. You can check total contracts in your Trade Report but it’s not a listed rule.
Q: Why can’t I trade more contracts with the 100K and 150K account sizes?
We deem excessive contracts as excessive contracts in a real environment, which doesn't vary based on Trading Combine size. These numbers would be the same if we had a million-dollar Trading Combine.
Q: Why didn’t you delete my trading day when I exceeded 200 contracts but was negative?
If we delete negative days we cannot control situations where traders ramp up their trades to have the day deleted. Too many trades on a down day is a lesson in and of itself, not a way to get days deleted.
Q: Do I need to reset?
No, if needed we will delete trading days that show excessive trading behavior as a warning. If this behavior is not changed the account may be reset.
Q: Will a reset negate the warning I just received?
No, we look at your behavior across Topstep® accounts. Resetting will not wipe out your trading history.
Q: I use scalping as my trading strategy and this is preventing it? Why would you stop me from scalping?
Making hundreds of rapid trades and taking advantage of preferential queues in the SIM environment will not translate to the live market. We want to prepare you for the live market by instilling better habits by limiting the number of trades and focusing on high probable setups.