Because if you pass the TS combines and qualify for your "funded" account it is not a $150,000 account. They do not fund your "funded" account with $150,000 cash. The $150K figure is simply a marketing thing for the virtual tryout accounts only.
In my opinion the only real funding is provided by TS is at the beginning of your newly funded TS funded account because at that point if you are a terrible trader and and never even generate daily profits then yes TS is on the hook for at least the daily (and weekly) loss limit of $3,000 if you violate that--or potentially on the hook for as much as $4500 if for example if you lost $500 per trading day and lost $2500 in the 1st week of trading (so you never violated the $3,000 weekly loss limit) and then in the 2nd week if you continue to lose $500 per day for 4 additional days and then your total loss for week 2 is is $2,000 and added to your loss on week 1 of $2500 now you have lost a total of $4500 and your account is closed.
However--if you generate profits your trailing max drawdown goes off of equity peak so you are actually penalized for profitable trading under a trailing max drawdown scenario ("penalized" when compared to a fixed drawdown scenario)
So ask your self this question --if you are a consistently profitable trader--wouldnt you make much more money under a 50-50 scenario that offers increased funding up to a $25,000 max fixed drawdown VS a trailing drawdown of $4,500
Lets say with a $25,000 fixed drawdown (fixed drawdown means you can empty the account of all profits to zero and you still have the max drawdown of $25K in place) you are trading 5 times as many contracts as you are with TS with your $4500 trailing drawdown
Going back to the example used before you generate $5,000 a month in your TS account (over and above the initial month that you generated $5K in profits and kept all $5K in their to keep your drawdown) - TS takes their 20% cut and you are left with $4K net each month
With the $25K fixed drawdown you trade 5 times as many contracts as you do in the TS account with only the $4500 trailing drawdown so you make 5x the profits, in this account you are generating $25,000 a month in profits and they take out their 50% and you are netting $12,500 per month VS the TS account where you are only netting $4K per month so you are netting triple the profits each month and you can withdraw all profits down to zero as often as you like and still have the full $25K max drawdown to trade with VS TS you have to leave $4500 in the account at all time and only can withdraw those profits over and above the $4500
How can you withdraw $5,000 from a $150,000 account? That's the total amount of the account that they funded. If I made a profit of $5,000, the account balance would be $155,000. The first $5,000 is supposed to belong to the trader. If you withdraw it, you're back at $150,000. Can't have a trailing max drawdown of $150,000 - that's the total value of the account (although I seriously doubt that they fund a trader at that level).
Again, there's nothing at their website that they close your account if you withdraw to the initial amount "funded".
TopStep doesn't answer questions on their Q&A thread. That makes me suspicious of their transparency.
