There is QM crude e-mini contracts which is half size of CL contract. It is less liquid and I traded it with my own money 2-3 years ago. It can be traded and used as well for those who are more conservative when it comes to position sizing and risk control. I am planning to take 50 000 evaluation trading CL only. It is either 1 CL contract or 1 QM contract per position. $2500 cushion is more than enough. I did pass Topstep combines and live preparation but traded beans. I was actually confined to beans. It was long time ago. I realize their rules had changed. Have not traded for 2 years but keeps hands on. Basically, if they count unrealized gain even starting with one positive tick there is one way only. Wait for right moment from high TF and take position. Moving stop makes no sense. Few break even trades and trailing account stop will move anyway reducing cushion. One must be right a lot to trade like this.
That's why I trade with OneUp! They haven't called me, they let me do what I do. Plus I would recommend them because the rules are MUCH better and it's ONLY 15 days to get funded. There's a trader in their chat room who traded 4 days and micro scalped the remaining 11 days, what a joke and he got funded!!!!!!!!!!!
This is my experience. I got funded twice with big accounts (150k). The first time my funded account was terminated for failing the scaling rule. It is very easy to make a mistake on this so watch out. The second time I failed to be flat on a news release that I was supposed to. The problem here is that this news was considered Medium importance by economic news so it was filtered out from my daily scan, so be careful to understand what news calendar they use. Have no doubt of this, They are not looking for profitable traders, my account was terminated while it was profitable without any warnings and on first strike because an honest mistake and it wont matter that the account was profitable and that I was consistently making money. I still have to see if I get paid my share of the profits in that account because I haven't received any contact yet. If you think that you will be able to make money consistently and withdraw money in the long term you are mistaken, that's not their business, their business is to collect fees for evaluations and get rid asap of traders who can make money. The funded account trades dont show up in the bid/ask volumes, they are not even real they are in sim, so they are not profiting from traders that make consistently money period. hope this helps, good luck.
I contacted topstep about the news thing and its also I terminable "offense" as well. if you didnt meet the min withdrawal threshold i think your balance would have to be over 159,000 in order to qualify for a withdraw i dont know the policy if for some reason you do have a profit and get terminated probably that you get nothing knowing that the main model is for fee collection.
@AHG_traderX I trade with 9 guys, 3 got funded, I'm the 4th. 2 got terminated are the two strike rule (held overnight position and the other traded news). Both of them were profitable and got paid, $190 and the other around $930. Again, I suspect this is another troll.... What calendar you talking about as they clearly do not have a calendar. It's all in the contract. WHICH FUNDING COMPANY YOU AT?? I'll send this over to them out of curiosity.
Hey @TraderMat, No I am not a troll, I am just sharing my experience so others understand what they are getting into. The second time the funded account has been terminated for holding a position through an economic release by mistake. This is something that is specified in the contract as you said. Some of the rules can be enforced automatically there is no need to let this to a human error but they aren't because their business is to make you go through another evaluation not to make money through paper trades (the trades are not real they are all sim in the funded account you haven't noticed). So that's the reason the long term life spam of any funded account is pretty much none. I am sure there are oneuptrader staff monitoring this thread and trying to keep their business running, are u one of them?. I won't evaluate again with them and rather to look for other options.
Sadly I think out of topstep and oneup One up has better terms. Topstep will terminate if you violate the daily loss limit even though the trailing stop wasn't violated. I agree if the news shouldn't be traded it would make more sense for the company to auto flatten all positions for specific events. of course you could say the trader should know the events to.
Hi caapital, Even when they separate the funding partners from the evaluation company, they are the same "company" and their business is collecting the fees. Proof of that is once you read the contract to get funded, the rules are very easy to break by mistake and even if they could enforce them automatically they won't. For example, being flat for news or not to scale over your size limit, but they prefer to get the notification from their system and terminate your account. I go even further, even if your account is pnl positive your funded account will be terminated breaking some of the more vanilla rules, which is very interesting "concept" for a company in theory looking for consistent profitable traders. The purpose of the rules in the contract is not to eliminate risk but at some point the trader to fail one of the rules which are unrelated to your pnl. Initially I was excited that I was going to learn some risk rules that would make me a better trader but very disappointed at the end (After getting funded and terminated twice for rules not related to the pnl) that it doesn't matter, there is no room for breaking other rules. I cannot speak on my experience in Topstep because I am not funded with them but I will give it a try. I asked Topstep's support what is their process if you break a rule regarding for example not being flat on a news release and their answer is that the risk manager works with you to see the case of your account, so I am guessing it is a more discretionary process. If somebody has experience of being kicked out in topstep funded account maybe they can comment if that's the case or it is another bucket shop. I am most interested to know for those rules that can be easily broken by accident what happens. I am sure funded traders are getting paid and all of that is legit because they have to or there won't be any case to attract more noobs to the evaluation process. But don't be mistaken some of the rules and how they are enforced are meant to terminate your account asap and not to make you a better trader. So watch out and know that it is not a long term funding business of your trading, if you are consistent drop money and when is terminated move on and be happy you won.
TraderMat, i understand position must not be held into Wednesday news. What other news trader must be flat before release? NFP Fridays? What else. is there official schedule from oneup trader? on which news trader must be flat? It looks like trader must determine first of all which rules are to follow to avoid such situation of being terminated to arise.
I think first of all we must ensure that no those rules broken. they have less rules than TST. I knew of a guy who was with TST for one year and then used his track record to find better option elsewhere... Scaling rule can be avoided by trading consistent size all the time and news should be planned in advance for the whole week. By the way, what is overnight position according to them. Can position be opened early morning before Nymex open?