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I was in a Funded account for about three months with Topstep a couple of years back. It lasted three months but it didn't work out for me at that time and I just bounced along negative until I got down to the maximum drawdown.
I didn't implicitly test the DOM to see if it was a real market, but having had my own account before and using the Jigsaw DOM showing the orderbook, approximate queue position and the volume transacted on the bid or offer, it is easy to tell the difference between sim accounts and their sometimes optimistic or pessimistic fills, and real orders that are traded based on queue position. I never felt anything was "off" when I was trading the Topstep Funded live account or I would have specifically checked.
But also I didn't check because it is advertised as a real Funded account and they sent me all the relevant account opening forms to fill in and sign and I paid the CME professional exchange fees. If they actually had me or other people on sim it would have been recognised as that very quickly indeed and called out equally quickly, not least by a competing firm.
I haven't been in a Funded account since then (I have been in the Pro Account in the past couple of years but that is clearly described as the sim option), but they have been going for nine years now and if they were just forcing you to wait ten days for a sim account and chucking your paperwork in the bin and pocketing the CME professional fees for themselves that would be a big scam that would cause major reputational damage to the company for no gain whatsoever and would have been revealed years ago. That doesn't apply just to Topstep but any funding company business of which a number of them quite clearly state whether they have people on sim or not or whether they have a sim option. I don't understand how there could be any reason for them to lie about it.
You do not win as a trader, you just get to play again the next day. If that game doesn’t appeal to you then you should not trade. Gary Norden
I have made the point a couple of times now that there is a topic of this thread, and that posts are often wandering off-topic.
I have also noted that I have gone a little off-topic at times myself, and that the underlying subject of how these firms operate is interesting and important enough that people will naturally tend to go there, and also to express their opinions on general matters relating to these firms, which are of wide interest in the community.
But I am asking participants to focus on the thread topic and not to bring up their views on everything else related to funding companies. There can be other threads for this, and there are.
I think that, speaking generally, both the specific topic of the thread and many of the side issues have been thoroughly discussed here. Any additional comments that are on-topic are of course welcome, but we should stay on-topic. Please take up other issues relating to these firms in other threads.
Thanks.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
@TraderAnna, I am sorry I didn't respond to your post earlier.
I do not want you to feel distress. I do not know if @Topstep will review these posts, although they have been explicitly tagged so they will have an opportunity to respond. My general experience with them (not as a funded trader) has been that they are reasonable-minded people who are not likely to want to retaliate, and I would not expect them to here.
You can see from the way that the discussion has expanded outward that the general topic of the funding companies is of great interest to the community. We do value the exchange of ideas, and if a post is based on someone's actual experience and belief, we do not generally remove it, so long as it does not otherwise violate our rules. We do specifically not allow inappropriately negative posts and we try to keep the conversations focused on substance, which we think benefits everyone, including those who are being reviewed. Your post seems like a straight-forward airing of a situation and does not appear to be intended to do anyone harm, so it passes the filters we have set. I do not think it will sound unfair to @Topstep either, although they of course will make their own decisions about how to respond, if at all.
I hope that @Topstep in particular, and the industry as a whole, will benefit from this discussion, and that TS will take it as an opportunity to clarify their policies. We take no stance on what they should do, but simply want the discussion to help illuminate the issues.
I think you should not have a concern on the matter. I don't think anyone will feel that you were deliberately trying to be harmful. Your post does not come across that way and I do not think it will be viewed that way by anyone who has read it.
Bob.
When one door closes, another opens.
-- Cervantes, Don Quixote
Okay, thank you @bobwest for the answer, I am a bit more relaxed now. I was only worried because I realized later that I did not read the legal stuff on their page. As a not native English person it is impossible to understand that completely anyways.
