Another Topstep Combine Attempt

Since my last $50K Combine attempt, I haven't thought much of Topstep nor have I made additional posts on them. More recently, I decided to take another shot at trading futures with them, especially since both ES and NQ are in pullbacks.

In an earlier post, I talked about the psychology of Topstep Combines and, more specifically, how I couldn't find much success with them.

The main reason was that they operate on a monthly subscription fee model where the longer you take to pass the Combine, the more recurring payments you make. As a result, this tends to lead to overtrading as you're trying to reach the profit target before next month's Combine fee kicks in. 

However, Topstep reduced their Combine fees, which I think should mitigate majority of the psychological pressures of passing. I don't remember exactly when then reduced their prices, but I'm not surprised. It's a way for them to remain competitive given the rise in popularity of funded prop trading.

Topstep Prices

In addition to the price reduction, there's another factor that motivated me to give the Combine another attempt. This other factor is I have a more defined trend trading strategy using Darvas boxes.

Rather than attempting to scalp the futures market throughout the day, I plan on bringing my FX strategy over, which should theoretically work better on instruments that have a naturally upward trending bias.

With this trading strategy, I anticipate I'll be taking the same set-and-forget approach where I place buy and sell stops when momentum picks up as price breaches intraday levels. This also means I won't be staring at my screen scanning ES and NQ signals on a minute-by-minute basis. I guess there's only one way to find out if I'll be okay with dragging this out and not placing trades every single day.