👀 New affiliate partnership announcement, New highs defy logic, Dip buyers beware

Hi folks, it’s Kieran! Another week is in the books and it’s time to do it all over again.

Quick note: At the end of this week’s edition, you’ll find all the details of my new affiliate partnership with a great new prop firm that I highly recommend and trade with myself. Check out all the details, including an amazing discount, at the bottom of the newsletter.

OK let’s get into this week’s news…

📢 Prop Firm Industry News

The Alpha Capital Group data leak story rumbles on as the hacker group who put their data up for sale have now made the data available to download for free. The firm continue to claim the leak is fake and are banning any mention of it in their discord, but from various checks on the data, it does appear to be real.

FundingPips, one of the biggest firms in the industry, have been under fire for the past few weeks as they rolled out new rules banning accounts of which they consider ‘toxic flow’, heavily restricting ones they deem ‘high risk’, and insisting on interviews with their risk team before paying out to many traders. In some cases, traders having to wait for up to a month for their interview. However, this week under the increasing wave of bad publicity, their CEO has come out and stated that many of those traders who were restricted are being unrestricted and the interviews will be expedited. Let’s see how this progresses this week.

In other news Funded Peaks claim that they are under attack from a coordinated group of traders, as their pass rate percentages have spiked considerably, putting their business at risk and delaying payouts. Let’s hope they can figure out what is going on and all traders owed money, receive their payouts.

Follow me on X -https://twitter.com/kierangohil_

🕜 Economic calendar

Here are this week’s red folder news events. US Retail Sales on Tuesday is the number to watch, however a lot of high impact data across Europe and Australasia is due to hit throughout the week, so be very careful if you are trading with firms who have news rules. Also note that Wednesday is a Federal holiday in the US, so liquidity might be thin.

📈 The Macro View

New all-time highs again in the S&P500 last week and overall sentiment hits FEAR?? The current rally continues to defy logic as we break out higher on an ever-increasing wall of worry. As I covered last week, this is due to the overwhelmingly bad market breath, with 3 stocks (Apple, Microsoft & Nvidia) going parabolic, and the other 497 flat or grinding lower.

The Nasdaq 100 also hit a new all time high last week with 72% of stocks closing red, and twice as many new lows as new highs. Crazy times, and even crazier when you consider that the Fed is looking to cut rates soon.

Goldman Sach’s end of year S&P 500 targets increased. Current price is 5430.

With all that in mind, where does Goldman see the market at year-end?

1. In a “catch-up” scenario, the S&P 500 index would end the year at 5900, 9% higher than today. The equal-weight index multiple would expand to 18x, matching its 2018 pre-pandemic high.

2. In a scenario of continued mega-cap exceptionalism, the S&P 500 index would end the year at 6300 (+16%). Assuming a 16x NTM P/E for the equal-weight index and a 45% P/E premium for the market-cap index, the aggregate S&P 500 would trade at a forward P/E of 23x, 16% above today (89th %ile of 6 month returns).

Can Mega Cap earnings support these new higher targets? Goldman thinks so:

 “Mega-cap tech EPS growth premium is expected to narrow - but still crush the rest of the market all the way to 2026.”

Can the French political crisis bring down the European market? An emerging theme to keep your eye on this week. The French stock market gapped down after Macron’s surprise announcement of a general election off the back of terrible European election results. The French market itself is not a huge worry, but of course any spillover to the rest of Europe is a major concern. The German DAX was down 3% last week so it must be watched closely for further signs of contagion. Dip buyers beware.

🔥 New prop firm affiliate partnership

As you know, since relaunching this newsletter I have not posted any affiliate links or recommended any firms due to the precarious state of the industry. However, I recently met James Glyde, a cTrader executive of 10 years, who runs PipFarm, a new firm with an interesting tilt towards the fun and gamified trading concepts that my own (ex)firm Traderseed aimed toward.

I have been trading with them myself from day 1 and since it feels like a good fit for ex-Traderseed traders like many of you, as well as anyone looking for a trustworthy firm with probably the best 1-Step program in the industry (with static drawdown!), I have decided to feature them in the newsletter.

They are not simply a copy and paste prop firm, they have a unique concept where you earn XP, complete quests and rank up to unlock bigger funding, better risk rules, faster scaling, and free challenge accounts.

They have offered an exclusive HUGE discount for Prop Traders Weekly readers.

Get 50% off their 50k account. This gets you a 1-Step 50k account for only $175! Click the banner below to visit their website and enter the code PTWEEKLY50 at checkout.

OK guys, that’s it for this week. I hope you enjoyed the newsletter, stay safe out there and i’ll speak to you next Monday!

Kieran