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We’re about to make your trading experience at Topstep a whole lot easier! Have you ever broken a rule in your Trading Combine® or Funded Account® because you got distracted and forgot to close a position before the bell? Or maybe your internet connection cut out on you, and the clock ran out before you could get back online to exit your trades? Well, issues like that are now a thing of the past.
Below, we will walk you through some great new features that will undoubtedly help prevent you from breaking a rule because you couldn’t get out of a position in time.
Starting now, all traders in the Trading Combine® and Funded Account® will have access to our new trade desk, which gives you a direct line of communication with our Risk Management team. In addition to that, in the event you have an open position going into the end of the day, we will automatically flatten your trades at 3:08 Pm CT to prevent you from breaking a rule!
In the past, if you found yourself in a position where you were unable to execute trades on your own, you would either have to contact our support team to flatten your position or simply wait it out until the end of the day, accept a rule break, and reset your account.
Now, with this new feature, you have the option to contact the Topstep Trade Desk and quickly connect with a risk manager who has the ability to place orders on your behalf. You simply need to call in, provide your name, account number, and what platform you use, then start placing orders!
There is one small catch, though. On any given day, we have thousands of active traders in the Trading Combine and Funded Level Accounts and only a handful of professional risk managers on hand to provide this service. So this does have the potential to become a bottleneck in the event of a disaster. Not to worry, though. You still have the option of contacting our kick-ass support team to get out of a trade.
One of the legacy rules of the Trading Combine and Funded Account is that you must close all positions by 3:10 PM CT. If you keep a trade open beyond the time threshold, you will incur a real break and potentially lose your account. This rule exists because in a traditional brokerage account, if you don’t provide the required maintenance margin up front to hold positions overnight, your trades would be auto-liquidated at the end of the day, and you would likely face a number of penalties for putting your broker at risk.
Now, we want to give our traders the most professional experience available, but not at the expense of potentially losing their trading account, so we have installed a stop-gap measure that will help you avoid almost any scenario where you would have an open position past 3:10 PM CT.
As of now, our team of risk managers will begin automatically flattening all open positions and cancel all working orders in all futures accounts starting at 3:08 PM CT. Our thinking is that this benefit should virtually wipe out any chance of incurring a rule break for not closing trades before the bell.
We realize that issues with technology have been a source of stress and frustration for a lot of our traders. These new features aim to mitigate those fears and keep you focused on your job as a trader.
Ultimately, our role as your partner is to keep you in the markets and help you continue to grow your account value. When you’re sitting on the sidelines, neither of us is making money. So, we will continue upgrading our program until we get it as close to perfect as possible.
Trade Well!
