It has to do with taking and mitigating risk. The profitable ranchers learn to do it well. The ones who don’t eventually go broke or quit. There are a lot of parallels between trading and ranching.
I wonder it at least the USA based firms (like Topstep) could be subject to FTC legal action alleging misleading advertising - etc which could result in having to pay refunds to consumers who purchased They did it to Warrior Trading and others https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/new...e-29-million-consumers-harmed-warrior-trading And of course now there is this from the CFTC https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8771-23 TopstepTrader used to call it a 150K account, but I see that in recent time they changed the wording to "150K buying power". I'm sure someone made them aware of their misleading marketing. I see that Apex for example still calls it a 150K account which is a joke as what they're offering is a 5K account (your drawdown).
I had someone at Tradiac tell me he had personal experience with an outfit called Gallant Markets who, as they were going under, spread out Cable (pound sterling) pairs by over 2000 pips to wipe out any clients holding GBP positions. But, since I'm not trading my own money, I only have a c-note at risk. Consequently, if there ever comes a day when I cost Tradiac more than pocket change (i.e., a few thousand dollars), I will have already reaped a far greater sum than I would have required to make that risk worthwhile.