👀 Topstep changes it's payout policy, A personal trading update, Positioning Extremely Streched

Hi guys, it’s Kieran! Another week in the markets is upon us, so let’s get ourselves prepared!

📢 Prop Firm Industry News

Topstep, one of the biggest futures firms, are updating their payout policy to protect the firm somewhat from traders who just YOLO their sim accounts for huge gains. As we have seen from other futures firms recently, it is essential that the firm is operating a profitable model, otherwise insolvency is inevitable. These changes still leave a lot of opportunity for profitable traders though, so I see this as a positive step for the firm as well as the futures prop industry.

Personal trading update: As many of you know, since February this year I have been trading prop firms full-time. It has been a great year and I have big plans for 2025, so I am going to start sharing more of my journey, as well as my payout certificates on X, so if you want to follow along with my progress, click through below and hit follow!

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

🔥 Follow Payout Junction on X - https://x.com/payoutjunction

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

🕜 Economic calendar

Here are this week’s red folder news events. US Inflation (CPI) out on Wednesday, and US PPI on Thursday, should be watched carefully as the Fed’s final interest rate decision is coming up on the 18th of this month. Elsewhere, the ECB meeting on Thursday could throw up some surprises as well.

📈 The Macro View

Positioning Extremely Streched

On Goldman Sach’s Prime book, the long equities trade is extremely crowded. Ordinarity it would be unsurprising to see a massive snap-back from here, however we are in unprecedented times, and since the election, money has been pouring into everything, so it’s also very possible that we could stay like this for a while.

Wait…what?

Curiously, Bank of America’s slow moving Bull/Bear indicator is moving the other way, into more bearish territory, which usually signals a ‘Contrarian’ buy. What could be the reason? Well, market breadth is deteriorating rapidly.

There were more declining than advancing stocks in the S&P 500 every day this week.

Yet the index hit a record high four times.

Since 1928, this is the first time that's ever happened.

Zoom out and this bull market could still have lots of room to run.

This current bull market is nearly 26 months old and is officially up more than 70%. Note that going back 50 years, the bull markets that made it this far lasted many more years in every single case." (Ryan Detrick)

Stocks which have performed better than Bitcoin

Crypto continues to go crazy with BTC smashing through 100k last week. However Bespoke research looked at stocks in the Russell 3,000 to see how many have done even better than bitcoin over the last five years. Of the stocks in the index with market caps of more than $5 billion, there are exactly ten. Interesting.

OK guys that’s it for this week. Expect volatility, stay risk managed, and enjoy the ride. See ya next week!

Kieran

Follow me on X here > https://x.com/kierangohil_

🔥 Follow Payout Junction on X - https://x.com/payoutjunction