Hey,
You’re in for a treat with today’s interview I had with Michael Patak, CEO of TopStep!
Micahel’s now 43, and when he’s not managing TopStep you can find him trading or skiing in the Aspen Rocky Mountains…
In our talk, we dive deep into trading history…
Back when Michael was trading stocks, penny stocks, and options in 1997.
We hear about his initial struggles with losing $90,000 and having to sell his vending company to pay off the last 30k he lost in the markets…
And going back to square one.
Thereafter he joined Kottke, a brokerage firm at the Chicago Board of Trade – and was tested for months on sim.
Once he proved himself he quit bartending for good and bought a seat on the floor.
He became a “local,” reaching the top step of Dow Futures at age 24!
Now… I don’t know about you… but that is awesome stuff!
From then on he was crushing it, making 50k+ per month (with a max risk of 1k-3k per day) and investing in real estate.
The rest of our discussion is about Top Step, founded in 2010.
Points of interest:
- Did Michael create the online prop firm industry?
- How TopStep started as a scouting agency for commodity traders and moved to help aspiring traders.
- The rapid growth of TopStep – with 73 employees now.
- How Michael transitioned super-fast to online (trading the Dow online only 2 months after the product launched in 2002!)
- His trading challenge to other prop firm CEOs.
- All in all, you can tell Michael loves trading and is passionate about helping traders…
He describes TopStep as a pioneer that has a strong focus on trader health and free coaching.
He’s very keen on discipline and gave us this gold nugget:
“The undisciplined pay the markets but the markets pay the disciplined.”
I particularly liked his thoughts on discount evaluations being marketed at scratch tickets and the casino mentality that some new traders have and why it’s damaging.
He’s part of a new self-governing organization for evaluation companies that will improve how traders are treated, i.e. getting live funds, etc.
Even though it took 8 years of stress to build up TopStep he’s now got more time for skiing, personal trading, and spending time with his family.
And best of all… Michael says there are 3 major updates coming from TopStep soon!
Are they going to go to one-step from two-step trading?
I guess we will have to wait and see.
Happy Trading,
Korbs.
P.S. Interested in my world-class trading system?
