👀 Fearful Sentiment to start the year, Big Money Shorts, Crypto Outflows

Hi guys, Happy New Year! I hope you all had a restful holiday season and are ready to get back into the markets. The Christmas and New Year prop firm promos are dwindling away, and their support and development teams are getting back up and running, so it’s time for us to lock-in once again, and start this year off right. Let’s get into it.

📢 Prop Firm Industry News

Lark Funding has continued the Instant Funding trend, by launching their own version on New Year’s Day.

Quant Tekel are in the process of a major backend migration which should bring more automation and functionality to their services. As such, funded accounts are currently suspended from trading until 13th January. Kind of annoying as I have trades open, but it is what it is 😄 

From Payout Junction, here are the firms who have paid out the most over the last 7 days 🏆️. Number 1 spot is taken by Tradeify with over 2.5m paid out. Wow 😵 

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Monitor prop firm payouts LIVE on Payout Junction -https://payoutjunction.com.

🕜 Economic calendar

Here are this week’s red folder news events. The economic calendar is back in full swing. US ISM Services PMI’s on Tuesday, US Unemployment and FOMC minutes on Wednesday, and Non-Farm payrolls on Friday rounds off a tricky week of data releases to manoeuvre.

📈 The Macro View

Fearful Sentiment to start the year …

No Santa Rally this year. Instead we got a small bout of volatility and a bit of whipsawing, however the S&P 500 remains broadly flat.

Shorts Increasing

Goldman Sachs report US-listed ETF short flow on their Prime book increased +14.6% in December – the largest monthly increase since Feb ‘21. Probably some year end hedging, but still worth pointing out. Big money selling.

As such, Positioning sentiment on Goldman’s prime book has receded nicely. We are still ‘streched’ overall but no longer in such an extreme state. This coupled with the Fear reading on the Fear & Greed index means adding longs here is less risky then it was a few weeks ago.

First half of Jan is usually strong

If you are thinking of getting long equities, now is typically a good time to do it. First 2 weeks of Jan is one of the best 2 week stretches of the year for S&P500 returns.

Crypto Outflows

A rare couple of week in the crypto space. Back to back outflows. Prices are holding up well though and there are no signs of panic yet. If overall market sentiment is going to flip to ‘Risk-off’ I would expect to see it in crypto first. For now, all appears to be under control but let’s see what this week has in store for us.

If you would like to Follow my personal trading journey, you can do so on X here > https://x.com/kierangohil_

A couple of late-in-the-year payouts was a great way to cap off the year for me 😁 

OK guys that’s it for this week. Make sure that you come into this year with a solid plan and be sure that you stick to it! Self-control, discipline and consistency is what is required, so find what works for you and stick with it, even through the drawdowns. I wish you all a profitable year ahead. 🚀 

Kieran

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