Become a Funded Forex Trader

What it Means:

• Your Net P&L cannot hit or exceed the Weekly Loss Limit at any point during the trading week (Sunday 4:00 PM CT- Friday 3:45 PM CT). The Weekly Loss Limit is based on your account equity as of the prior Friday after the close of trade and is automatically calculated on your dashboard here. In the Trading Combine^® Step 1, the Weekly Loss Limit is $2,000. In Step 2, the Weekly Loss Limit is $1,000.
• In Step 1, the Weekly Loss Limit is $2,000 for the $300,000 Combine. If at the close of trading on Friday, your account balance was $301,000, your Weekly Loss Limit for the following week would be set at $299,000. If at any point during that week, your equity slipped below $299,000, you would violate the Weekly Loss Limit.
• The Weekly Loss Limit is especially important during Step 2 when it shrinks the maximum loss in any given week for all accounts. This goes down to $1,000 for the $300,000 Trading Combine. If we use the example above where you grew your equity to $301,000 on Friday at 3:45 PM CT, then your balance would not be able to dip below $300,000 at any point during the following week.
• The Weekly Loss Limit is factored based on each trading day’s realized and unrealized P&L. If your account falls below the Weekly Loss Limit, any open trades will be auto-liquidated and your account will become ineligible for funding.

Why it is Important:

• Adhering to a loss limit instills discipline and proper risk management.
• At a certain point, you need to call a bad week, a bad week (we all have them).
• It allows you to live to trade another day or week; the markets will be there tomorrow.
• Losses can be emotional, and emotions affect decision making.

What it Means:

• The Account Loss Limit is best thought of as a minimum account balance. It functions like a Trailing Maximum Drawdown and moves higher with each realized balance high you achieve in your account. The Account Loss Limit for the $300K Trading Combine Step 1 account is $2,000. This means that when you start trading in the account, your balance cannot drop below $298,000. If you add realized profits, the Account Loss Limit also moves higher to be $2,000 below your highest realized account balance. The Account Loss Limit will never move higher than the original starting balance of the account, which in this case is $300,000.
• Your realized balance high is calculated intraday from your realized profits. So, if you make $500 on your first trade in the $300K account, your Account Loss Limit will trail up intraday with this new realized balance high to $298,500. Your minimum account balance can not fall below $298,500 for the remainder of the evaluation period.
• If, at any point, your realized or unrealized account balance drops below your Account Loss Limit, any open trades will be liquidated and your Trading Combine will be ineligible for a Funded Account.

Why it is Important:

• Allows you to recognize and reevaluate when your strategy is not working in current market conditions.
• Encourages smart account management.

What it Means:

All traders must be flat by 3:45 PM CT Friday through Sunday at 4:00 PM CT. In the Trading Combine^® Step 1, you can trade any other time during the trading week.

Why it is Important:

• You should only be exposed to risk when you are able to get in and out of the market.
• Trades cannot be closed over the weekend, increasing risk to the trader.

The Forex Pairs listed above are the pairs that traders can trade

What it Means:

In a nutshell, leverage is the ability to use borrowed money to increase your buying power. In all accounts at TopstepFX, whether it be a Trading Combine or a Funded Account, the cash value is leveraged at a ratio of 100:1. This simply means that for every $1,000 in your trading account, you have $100,000 worth of buying power.

Your starting balance is the cash value of your account when the market opens, not the leveraged amount of equity available. For example, in a $300K trading account, your starting balance is $3,000. As the unrealized equity in your account grows while you’re holding a position, the lot size you’re able to trade begins to increase.

For Example:

If you show an unrealized profit of $500 in a trade in a $300k account, then your buying power will increase allowing you to add more contracts to the trade. However, the same Weekly Loss Limit will still apply.

If you successfully exit the trade as a winner (let’s say you made $1200), your starting balance will immediately reflect that profit ($4,200), and your leveraged equity will increase to $420k. However, the same starting rules will still apply to the account ($300k).