👀 Lucid and Tradeify crack down on cross firm hedging

Hi everyone, another week is upon us and the markets are open, so lets get into it.

It looks like a crackdown on traders hedging across multiple firms is coming to the futures side of the industry, with Lucid and Tradeify both announcing plans to target these bad actors.

This has long been an issue on the CFD side, and it appears that many of these groups have now moved into futures. It is good to see two of the industry’s biggest firms taking action.

The first step announced by Lucid is that new users who meet criteria associated with a higher risk of fraud will be required to complete KYC during registration.

Lucid explained:

“We’ve seen a recent uptick in coordinated bad actors: payment fraud, false identities, group hedging, and much more. Our detection gets better every month, but the hard part is enforcing at scale without catching legitimate traders in the net. That’s been our priority throughout.

We’ve now reached a point where stricter enforcement is necessary to stop this before it grows.”

Tradeify also announced measures of its own:

Lucid CEO AJ sums it up well at the end of the firm’s announcement:

“Adding friction sucks, but for the time being we need to stop fraud at the door while we put additional measures in place. This process ensures fewer traders fail verification after purchasing accounts with Lucid.

Firms and traders both lose when bad actors operate unchecked, and cleaning this up is good for the industry.

📢  Firm Announcements

• FundedNext launched FundedNext Labs, debuting an experimental 50K one step challenge with a 6% profit target, no daily loss limit, no consistency rule, no margin rule, and a 24 hour payout guarantee or an extra $1,000. The firm also introduced the new Rapid Pro Futures evaluation, featuring no daily loss limit, rewards every three days, and no buffer rule.

• Alpha Capital Group unveiled Alpha Direct, its new instant funding program with no evaluation, permanent price reductions across most plans, expanded one step options, new swap free and 90% performance split add ons, and confirmed that direct crypto withdrawals are now live.

• FundingPips teased a new retrospective rule designed to benefit traders, with full details still to come.

From Payout Junction, here are the firms that paid out the most over the last 7 days 🏆️.

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🕜 Red Folder News

Here are this week’s red folder news events. The FOMC meeting on Wednesday, followed by US advance GDP and Core PCE inflation data on Thursday, are the main events to look out for.

📈 Markets

Risk off - back to Fear

Another Risk off week with the equity markets putting in consecutive red weeks.

The Nasdaq 100 is now down 7% this July, putting it on pace for its worst July in 22 years when it fell 7.55% in 2004. It has been brutal for AI stocks, while oil prices and interest rates are rising at the same time because of the conflict with Iran.

Selling Mag7

Hedge funds have consistently sold the Mag7 stocks this year.

They are now close to being the least long they have been on the group at any point over the past 12 months, with the long to short ratio sitting in the 10th percentile.

Not even retail is buying stocks

Retail flows dropped to the lowest since the pandemic, per Vanta (10 day MA)

Is Gold the Better Dip to Buy?

State Street put out an early 2027 gold outlook. Current price is $4,000.

Base case, 70%: $4,750 to $5,500
Bull case, 5%: $5,500 to $6,250
Bear case, 25%: $4,000 to $4,750

They note, central bank buying and Chinese demand support the upside, while a stronger dollar and higher real yields remain the main risks.

Dip buyers are currently getting a 27% discount from Gold’s all time high set in December of last year.

OK, you’re all caught up. Have a good week!

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