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  • šŸ‘€ Prop Firm Visa Card? The Funded Trader is back + latest Hedge Fund research

šŸ‘€ Prop Firm Visa Card? The Funded Trader is back + latest Hedge Fund research

Your weekly dose of prop firm news and macro commentary has arrived!

Hey guys, itā€™s Kieran! Another week is upon us.

Firstly, if this is the first time that you are receiving this newsletter from me and were subscribed my old Traderseed newsletter, please accept my apologies. It appears that a chunk of subscribers were not migrated over here to my new newsletter platform. That should be rectified now. So if you were a subscriber before and are wondering what the heck this is, then hereā€™s a personal update from me on the Traderseed closure and what my plans are going forward https://www.proptraders.io/p/new-home-new-goals-endless-bull-run-time-get-started.

OK with that said, letā€™s get started on this weekā€™s newsletter.

šŸ“¢ Prop Firm announcements.

It was another busy week in the industry with lots of newsworthy announcements. Any firms mentioned here are not a recommendation, so make sure to do your own research.

Firstly an update on the new ā€˜predatoryā€™ news rules adopted by most of the big firms a couple of weeks ago. The good news is that due to the pushback, Funded Engineer have reworked their rule to now allow swing traders who have opened positions before the red folder news window to close positions during the window. This is a much more fair implementation. Here is their reworked rule:

After listening to community's opinion, some changes to the "news trading" rule will be applied in order to create a fair environment for swing traders.

Any trades opened prior to the news event (1 hour, 1 day, etc.) and closed within the 6-minute period pre and post news will be counted. Your profit will be valid.

Profit from trades that are opened within the 12-minute window during high-impact news event on the affected currency will not be counted.

Funded Engineer

The bad news is that the majority of other firms who have implemented this rule have not improved it. MyFundedFX considered changing it, but ultimately decided against it, which is disappointing.

The news rule has been finalized

Any positions opened or closed within 3 minutes of high impact news for the asset being traded will not count towards your profits. These are soft breaches meaning profits will be removed but you will not lose the account.

If you are swing trader please close your position beyond the 3 minute window. We are exploring options to allow those with consistent success ā€œswingā€ trading specifically to utilize TP/SL closures during the window but for the time being any executed position resulting in profits will be removed.

MyFundedFX

In other news, The 5%ers have launched a Visa Card, on which you can get payouts directly to. Virtual cards will be available worldwide with physical cards an option for European traders as well. This an interesting step forward for the industry, from a highly trusted firm, so I will be monitoring further developments closely.

Lastly The Funded Trader appear to be making a comeback, with new ownership. They released a long update detailing their plans for relaunching, claiming that they will be honoring all payouts. All active traders will have to restart from phase 1 again though, including funded traders, and it appears that if you are funded with a payout due, you will get the payout but they will breach your account. This is obviously a crazy situation and the plans that they have released are wild and unprecedented, so I would advise extreme caution dealing with this firm.

šŸ•œ Economic calendar

Here are this weekā€™s red folder news events. Thursday looks to be the key day, with US GDP and Unemployment numbers hitting at the same time.

Times are in Central European Summer Time (CEST)

šŸ“ˆ The Macro View

Positioning Sentiment picking up. After a third down week in a row for equities, it appears that the dip buyers have shown up right on cue, as the Goldman Sachs positioning sentiment indicator has come back to life. Not ā€˜stretchedā€™ yet but long positions from major funds were added last week.

Where did the money go? The Mag 7 of course. Tech earnings are on deck this week ( 4 of the Mag 7 are reporting, Tesla, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet). From Goldman Sachs ā€œUS Info Tech was the most net bought sector on the Prime book this week, primarily driven by long buys in mega-cap names. The sector has now been net bought for three straight weeks amid the recent price correction, and this weekā€™s net buying in the sector was the largest in 2 months. Chart shows Goldman Sachs prime book exposure to the Mag7 stocks.ā€

Too late to join the tech party? Absolutely not. Just 6% of S&P 500 Technology sector stocks are above their 50-day moving averages. This so far, appears to be a healthy broad-based pullback in the overall market, with very little panic. Chart shows percentage of S&P 500 tech stocks above their 50 day moving average. Makes interesting reading for dip buyers.

S&P 500 Seasonality. We are in ā€˜chop seasonā€™. In election years we tend to see sideways action in equity markets from April to June, then a big summer rally before election jitters hit in October. In a year that has very much NOT been normal, the current price action appears to be somewhat a return to normality.

Insiders are the most bearish in at least a decade. Letā€™s finish on this interesting chart showing a multi-year low in the proportion of publicly traded companies seeing net-buying by insiders. Very little insider buying. What red flags do they see internally...? Maybe weā€™ll find out soon as ā€˜Earnings Seasonā€™ ramps up this week, so maybe we have a surprise or two in store šŸ™‚ 

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OK guys, I hope you enjoyed this weekā€™s newsletter and hopefully everyone has now been migrated over to my new newsletter platform. As ever, if you have any feedback just reply and let me know, or hit me up on X, otherwise have a great week and iā€™ll speak to you next Monday!

Kieran

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