Thanks.
Drawback = drawdown?
If so, the initial drawdown is $4.5K per account. I believe it trails higher as your account balance increases, but it stops at $0. So, right now the possible drawdown is the entire account balance.
ES Journal - 2023/2024
- Thread starter Buy1Sell2
- Start date
Thanks.
Drawback = drawdown?
If so, the initial drawdown is $4.5K per account. I believe it trails higher as your account balance increases, but it stops at $0. So, right now the possible drawdown is the entire account balance.
Agree. Haven't seen a good pullback yet.
wanker-ism #n
When you post you know what the market is doing, it is often irrelevant.
Could be wrong, but i'm guessing by 'drawback' he means 'downside'? (as in, not so good things about trading these accounts? maybe hidden costs and rules and stuff??)
Thanks @Laissez Faire, but as @theapprentice mentions (thanks!), I meant the disadvantages. They take 10% of your profits, right? I'm assuming the companies are legit. If it was just like that: you lose money, you're covered but you make profits, you keep 90%... how come not everybody is trading through these firms?
(I'm not counting as disadvantages that they enforce discipline, reasonable leverage, etc., as those are positives, even if it's somebody else who's imposing them on you and sounding like your mum
) Edit: "your mum" as in somebody's generic mum, not *your* mum, all my respect to all posters' mums 
You keep 100 % of the first $10K. After that, it's a 10 % cut to the firm.
Disadvantages with Topstep:
- You need 30 positive days of $200 or more to withdraw your full balance (90 %). I dislike this rule a lot. After 30 days you can withdraw daily, though. I already withdrew a small sum to see if it works and the money was in my account the next business day (request made on a Friday and had it in my account on Monday).
- Higher taxes compared to trading futures on your own.
- No overnight holds (need to be flat through the electronic close).
Good question. If I don't get any unpleasant surprises I may just stick with these for a while.
There is a ton of people trading with these firms, though. From my impression from lurking in their Discord the average customer learned about trading yesterday, doesn't know what a futures contract is and hangs around the server begging for discount codes and a free 'reset' after they blew their first (or hundredth) attempt. The entire business model is based on the high failure rate in this business where selling subscription fees is the major source of income. With Topstep, they do eventually give you an actual live account with a broker if your results are good.
Topstep have been around since 2006, so they seem like a safe choice.
Another firm (MyForexFunds) which went bust a while back had collected $310 million in fees in approximately 2 years and had over 135K customers in total.
The retail trading industry is huge. I'm wondering just how many hundreds of thousand people worldwide are trying to make it in this game. Crazy when you think about it.
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Could continue dropping, too.
I'll see if I can find any historical analogues tomorrow and if there's any clues about the next move.Thank god you're not in the investment newsletter business. Imagine you telling your investors, "well, hmm, I can foresee the stock moving both up and down. We'll just have to wait and find out."Could continue dropping, too.
I swear, Merlin has no sense of humor.
Kroger does report this week though. FTC needs to approve that merger.