Topstep's Trading Combine has four rules that decide your fate: the profit target, the daily loss limit, the trailing maximum drawdown, and the consistency expectation. Miss any one and the account is done. Here's what each means and how to trade so none of them catches you.
The four rules that matter
- Profit target — the amount you need to reach to pass. This is the easy part; almost nobody fails for lack of a target.
- Daily loss limit — a hard floor on how much you can lose in a single day. One oversized revenge-trade session ends the account.
- Trailing maximum drawdown — trails your highest balance, so unbanked profit raises your fail line. This is what quietly kills most accounts.
- Consistency — no single day can be too large a share of your total profit, which stops "one hero day" passes.
Why traders fail Topstep
Rarely because the strategy has no edge — usually because sizing was tuned for profit and the trailing drawdown or daily loss limit caught a perfectly normal losing streak. The consistency rule then punishes the natural response of swinging big to catch up.
Pass it as a quant problem
Three steps. First, prove the edge is real with a holdout and a Monte-Carlo reshuffle so you're not trading luck. Second, simulate Topstep's exact rules to get your pass odds and see how often you'd brush the trailing line. Third, size so a routine drawdown survives all four rules at once — including the consistency cap.
TapeScript simulates Topstep and nine other firms on every strategy, modelling the trailing drawdown, daily loss, and consistency rule together — so you know your odds before the Combine fee, not after. Run the simulator →