TopStepX · MNQ Micro E-Mini Nasdaq-100
Fixed reward-to-risk. Hard stops. No hesitation. Athena trades the plan every session, exactly the same way, no matter how the last one went.
Why accounts die
Price comes back to your stop. You know the level is invalid. You also know that if you just give it twenty more points it'll turn — and sometimes it does, which is the worst thing that can happen to you, because now you'll do it again.
The strategy on your whiteboard has an edge. The strategy you actually executed on Tuesday afternoon, down 1.4R and needing it back before the close, does not. Those are two different strategies, and only one of them gets traded.
The single most expensive habit in retail futures. It converts a planned, sized loss into an unplanned account breach, and it feels rational every time.
You take a loss at 10:40, and the next entry isn't a setup — it's a refund request addressed to the market.
Up 0.7R, green on the day, and the urge to bank it is overwhelming. Do that often enough and a 1:2 system quietly becomes a 1:0.7 system that loses money.
You see the move, hesitate, miss it by a few bars, and enter anyway at the worst price with a stop that won't fit your risk.
Nothing is setting up, so you invent something. Most of the damage in a losing month is done outside the hours the edge actually lives in.
Two losses in, the size goes up "to make it back faster." This is the exact sequence that takes out a funded account in an afternoon.
Risk engine
The limits below aren't preferences you toggle mid-session. They're enforced in the execution path, so a trade that breaches one is never submitted in the first place.
Before the first trade, Athena asks how much you want to risk and shows what each choice costs you as well as what it buys. The strategy is identical in all three — only the dollars change.
Hit it and the session is over for new entries. Open positions are still managed to their bracket — it stops opening, not managing. The halt survives a restart, so relaunching does not hand the day a fresh set of losses.
Both prices are set when the position opens and neither moves. No trailing, no breakeven jumps, no partials — the exit you were promised is the exit you get.
Stop and target rest at the broker from the moment of entry, then are read back and confirmed. If your machine sleeps, drops Wi-Fi, or crashes, the exits are still working.
Every mode shows how many losing trades the account can absorb and how many wins a day the firm's consistency rule allows, worked out from the live settings rather than typed in.
Hardest to kill, slowest to finish. The most chances to be wrong and still be trading tomorrow.
The default. Enough room to be wrong several times in a row without the account coming under pressure.
As fast as the rules allow, and a real risk of losing the account. Four bad trades ends it. There is deliberately no tier above this one.
Athena brakes before the firm does, and it looks one trade ahead: if taking another position could reach the daily limit, it stops there instead of walking into it.
Most of what ends an evaluation isn't a bad trade. It's a rule nobody was tracking.
Your best day can't exceed 55% of the profit target or the target is recalculated upward. Athena counts the day as it goes and stops before a win pushes you over — a winning trade that makes the account harder to pass is not a win.
It checks whether the next stop could reach the firm's daily loss limit. If it could, the day ends there rather than at the limit, where the platform would flatten you itself.
Nothing is carried overnight. Anything still open at the New York close is flattened at market, and no new position is opened in the final minutes where there is no time to manage it.
The firm allows five minis or fifty micros. Athena derives the ceiling from whichever contract is live, so a size that would breach it is never sent.
Results
Honest fit
Athena is narrow on purpose. If you're in the right column, it will probably frustrate you more than it helps, and I'd rather say that here than after you've paid.
Good fit
Bad fit
The application
Athena runs as a native Windows application. Connect your TopStepX account, press start, and leave it. The interface is there so you can watch it work — not so you can interfere with it.
Interface preview — values shown are illustrative
Specification
| Instrument | MNQ — Micro E-mini Nasdaq-100 |
|---|---|
| Broker / platform | TopStepX via ProjectX Gateway |
| Account types | 50K Combine — practice or funded |
| Trading window | 09:00–16:00 New York · 06:00–13:00 Pacific |
| Session close | Flat at the bell — nothing held overnight |
| Risk modes | $150, $250 or $500 per trade — chosen at startup |
| Position size | Derived from the chosen risk cap and the live stop distance |
| Position ceiling | Capped at the firm's limit — 5 minis or 50 micros |
| Reward-to-risk | Fixed, set at entry, enforced every trade |
| Stop handling | No trailing, no breakeven jump, no partials |
| Daily loss halt | Scales with the chosen mode, always under the firm's limit |
| Consecutive loss halt | Three in a row ends the session |
| Cooldown | Five minutes between trades |
| Firm rule guards | Daily loss limit, 55% consistency cap, position ceiling |
| Restart behaviour | Halts and daily totals survive a restart or a crash |
| Order type | Bracket — entry, stop and target submitted together |
| Order verification | Stop and target read back from the broker and confirmed |
| Contract roll | Front month detected automatically at each start |
| Market data | Real-time streaming quotes and order updates |
| Trade log | Every closed trade written to CSV with entry, exit, slippage and reason |
| Built-in analysis | Trade report and replay tools for testing settings on real history |
| Alerts | Audible on entry, on exit, and when a halt triggers |
| Operating system | Windows 10 or later, 64-bit |
| Install size | ~22 MB, single executable |
| Dependencies | None — Python is not required |
| Licensing | Activation key bound to one machine |
Verify before you run it
So don't. Check it first. Below is the exact fingerprint of the file you'll receive, what it connects to, and what it never touches. Everything here is verifiable without taking our word for any of it.
4bd86179b73def55bcee01a00b4cefe1414aa204ad7697468873626104cd575ccertutil -hashfile Athena.exe SHA256 in Command Prompt after downloading. If the result doesn't match the string above character for character, the file has been altered — delete it and tell us.
Release history
Existing licence holders get every update inside their key period at no additional cost.
After you buy
The whole handover is five steps and usually finishes the same day. Here it is in full, so you know what you're agreeing to before any money moves.
Reach either of us on Discord. Tell us which account you're running so we can confirm Athena fits it before you pay anything.
You get payment details, and once they've settled, the download link for Athena.exe. Verify the checksum above before you run it.
Athena shows a code derived from your machine on first launch. Send it back — it identifies the hardware your key will bind to.
We issue a 12-digit key against that code, usually within a few hours. Paste it in once and the main interface unlocks.
We'll ask you to. Watch a full session before it touches a funded account, so you've seen how it behaves when you're not the one driving.
Direct, from the people who wrote it. Install, activation and configuration issues are covered for the life of your licence. Expect a reply within 24 hours, usually much sooner during US market hours.
Full refund if it won't run. If Athena fails to install or activate on a supported Windows machine and we can't fix it, you get your money back. Once a key is issued and working, the licence is bound to your hardware and can't be returned — so test on practice first.
We don't coach the market. We'll fix anything wrong with the software. We won't tell you whether to run it today, size differently, or override a trade — that defeats the entire point of it.
Full terms, refund policy, privacy policy and risk disclosure: read the legal page.
Get Athena
Athena isn't a signal group, an indicator pack, or a strategy you still have to execute. It's the executing part — the piece that was always going to be the weak link.
Secure checkout through Stripe. After paying, message either of us on Discord with the Request Code Athena shows on first launch, and your activation key is issued against it.
Questions first? Message rakahen or twzst_ on Discord.
No. Athena ships as a single compiled Windows executable with everything bundled. Download it, double-click it, and it runs. There is no runtime to install and nothing to configure at the system level.
Because the executable isn't code-signed yet. Windows shows a SmartScreen warning for any new unsigned binary regardless of what it does, and it clears once enough machines have run it. You can click "More info" then "Run anyway" to proceed. If you'd rather verify first, upload the file to VirusTotal and check it there before running it.
On first launch Athena shows a Request Code derived from your machine. Send that code over and you get back a 12-digit activation key that only works on that machine. The key carries an expiry date; when it approaches, the status bar counts down and a new key extends it. If you rebuild your PC or move to different hardware, your Request Code changes and you'll need a fresh key issued against the new one.
Yes — Athena runs locally on your machine, so it needs to be awake and connected during the 9:00 AM–4:00 PM NY window to evaluate setups and submit entries. Once a position is open the stop and target sit at the broker as bracket orders, so an exit will still fill correctly even if the machine drops offline mid-trade.
Not currently. Athena is a Windows application. A Mac running Windows in Parallels or Boot Camp works, and a cheap Windows VPS is the common setup for people who don't want to leave a desktop running all day.
No. Athena is built specifically against the TopStepX API and trades the Micro Nasdaq (MNQ) only. The risk limits are tuned to the 50K account's drawdown structure, and the strategy is built around Nasdaq session behaviour. It isn't a general-purpose bot and it isn't pretending to be one.
No, and be suspicious of anything sold to you on that basis. Athena removes execution error and enforces risk limits — it does not remove market risk. The strategy takes losing trades, has losing days, and can have losing weeks. What it will do reliably is take the same setup the same way every time, which is the part most traders can't do manually.