Today’s edition is brought to you by Lark Funding, the only CDBO Certified Prop Firm.

Use code MARCH10 for 10% any challenge of your choice.

🚀 GM Munchers! The market is like your ex—sends mixed signals, makes no sense, and somehow still takes your money. But not to worry! Pip Munch is here to make things easier.

On today’s menu:

• 🚨Bloodbath on Wall Street: Trump’s Tariffs Just Wrecked Markets

• 👀 The Funded Trader Releases Tax Returns – But Does It Change Anything?

• 📉 Target Warns That Consumers Are Worried

• 🤔 Is Now A Good Time To Invest? What 125 Years of Data Says

• ❌ 7 Prop Firms Banned This Trader

MARKET OVERVIEW

🚨 Bloodbath on Wall Street: Trump’s Tariffs Just Wrecked Markets

If you checked the markets yesterday, we hope you had a seatbelt on.

🔻 S&P 500? Biggest loss since December.

🔻 Nasdaq? Down 2.6%, led by an 8% drop in Nvidia.

🔻 Bitcoin? Down 8%, erasing most of the historic weekend rally.

The reason?

Trump’s 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico are officially happening.

After weeks of speculation, the White House confirmed there was “no room left” for negotiations, and that’s all traders needed to hear.

What followed was a complete sentiment shift—a full-blown risk-off move.

Stocks, crypto, and even oil got smoked.

The only things looking green? Treasury bonds and the US dollar.

If you don’t know what "risk-off" means, now is the time to learn—because if this trend keeps up, traders who don’t adjust are gonna get burned. 🔥

🛑 Risk-Off Mode: What It Means for Traders

Markets flip between two modes:

✅ Risk-On – Investors pile into stocks, crypto, and other high-growth assets.
❌ Risk-Off – Capital flies to safety (bonds, gold, and the US dollar).

Since the start of 2024, we’ve been stuck in neutral—waiting to see if the Fed will cut rates or if inflation sticks around. But now? We might finally have our answer.

🔑 Tariffs = Risk of higher inflation = The Fed holding rates higher for longer.

And if that’s the case? Risk assets are in trouble.

🔍 3 Assets We’re Watching 👀

With the market shaking out weak hands, there are some interesting setups forming. Here are three assets we’ve got our eyes on:

1️⃣ Strategy (Formerly MicroStrategy) – The Ultimate BTC Proxy

📉 Down 27% in the last month
📌 Michael Saylor keeps stacking Bitcoin, but the stock has taken a bigger hit than BTC itself.

Saylor’s relentless Bitcoin buying turned Strategy into a leveraged bet on BTC.

If Bitcoin recovers, MSTR could snap back hard.

But if BTC struggles? Strategy’s heavy debt load could make things ugly.

If you're bullish on Bitcoin long-term and don’t mind a little (okay, a LOT) of volatility, this one’s worth watching.

2️⃣ Coinbase (COIN) – The Crypto Casino House

📉 Down 30% in the last month
📌 A bet on crypto adoption, but at the mercy of regulatory and market sentiment.

Coinbase follows Bitcoin’s lead—but with higher beta.

When BTC drops 5%, COIN might drop 10%. But when BTC pumps, Coinbase often moves even higher.

Right now, the stock is taking a beating alongside the entire crypto market.

But if Bitcoin can stabilize, COIN could be one of the fastest movers back up.

3️⃣ US Dollar (DXY) – The King of Safe Havens

📉 Down 3% from its January high
📌 If rate cuts aren’t coming soon, the dollar could rip higher.

Despite all the recession talk, the U.S. economy remains stronger than most.

If inflation stays sticky and the Fed holds rates steady, the dollar could make a comeback—especially as global growth slows.

Traders are underpricing the odds that the Fed stays hawkish. If they’re wrong, the dollar could surprise to the upside.

🎯 The Bottom Line

Markets just took a major hit, and things could get even choppier from here.

If we’ve truly entered a risk-off phase, stocks and crypto might struggle in the short term.

But selloffs also create opportunities.

Whether it’s a beaten-down stock, an oversold crypto play, or a mispriced macro trade, there’s money to be made—if you’re paying attention.

🔔 Stay locked in. This week could be just the beginning.

SPONSORED BY LARK FUNDING

Unlock Your Trading Potential This March 🚀 

Traders, we’ve got BIG news. This March, we’re making it even easier to get funded with 10% OFF all challenges.

Use Code: MARCH10

Here’s why Lark Funding is the move:

✅ CDBO Certified – The gold standard of regulation. Payouts on time, every time.
✅ 1,000+ Days in Business – We’ve been around, and we’re not going anywhere.
✅ $100K Challenges Starting at $350 – Unlock your potential at a low cost.
✅ First Payout On Demand – Because waiting is for amateurs.

This deal is valid until March 31st—don’t miss it!

PROP FIRMS

👀 The Funded Trader Releases Tax Returns – But Does It Change Anything?

Well, well, well—The Funded Trader just dropped their tax returns, and let’s just say they tell quite the story.

For those who haven’t been following the saga, The Funded Trader was one of the biggest prop firms in the game before going under in 2024.

At their peak, they were handing out millions in payouts to traders worldwide.

But when the house of cards collapsed, thousands of traders were left hanging, waiting on payouts that never came.

Now, they’ve released their tax documents, seemingly in an effort to show transparency and prove they weren’t just running off into the sunset with traders' money.

But do these numbers actually change anything?

Let’s dive in.

📊 Explosive Growth… and an Even Bigger Collapse

Looking at their financials, one thing is clear: The Funded Trader grew at an absolutely insane pace.

• 2021 revenue = $3.8 million

• 2022 revenue = $42.7 million

• 2023 revenue = $135.3 million

Yep, you read that right. They went from $3.8M in revenue in 2021 to $135M in 2023—a nearly 35x increase in just two years.

On paper, that kind of growth looks like a dream come true.

But with great power (and revenue) comes great responsibility… and that’s where things got messy.

🏦 A Business Model Built on Thin Ice

While their income exploded, so did their expenses—faster than a trader revenge-buying a challenge after a blown account.

In 2023, The Funded Trader reported $128.7M in total deductions, meaning that despite raking in over $135M in revenue, they were barely scraping by with $5.1M in ordinary business income. 

That’s a 3.8% margin.

For context, McDonald's makes about 30% on a Big Mac, so TFT was running a multi-million dollar prop firm on worse margins than a fast-food burger.

Now, the documents they shared don’t show profit distributions, so the real margins could be higher—but one thing is clear: Their books don’t show massive profits.

This means that if anything went wrong (spoiler: it did), there wasn’t much room to absorb the blow.

And that’s exactly what many traders had suspected all along: The Funded Trader wasn’t operating sustainably.

Instead of keeping a healthy cushion, they were burning through revenue—likely reinvesting heavily into marketing, infrastructure, payouts, and yes, yachts in Miami (seriously, check Twitter).

Which brings us to the real elephant in the room…

❌ Unpaid Payouts & What’s Next

No matter how transparent these tax returns seem, they don’t change the fact that countless traders are still waiting on payouts from as far back as March 2024. 

At this point, some of them have probably gone through all five stages of grief—twice.

TFT has been promising to sort things out for over a year now, but so far, the only thing traders have received is radio silence.

At this rate, some might have a better shot at getting a refund from FTX (and that’s saying something).

So, does this mean The Funded Trader is planning a comeback? Or is this just an attempt to slap some PR polish on a broken firm?

Releasing tax documents might score them some transparency points, but at the end of the day, traders don’t care about income statements or balance sheets—they care about one thing: getting paid.

For now, The Funded Trader’s legacy remains a cautionary tale about rapid growth, unsustainable challenge rules, and the dangers of trusting prop firms that scale too fast.

Reply to this email and let us know what you think!

🚀 Pre-Market Fuel

1. 😂 Is Trump going to be put on the $100 bill? The idea has been introduced to Congress.

2. February sales are down at Target. This is a strong leading indicator of consumer confident falling and is something the Fed will watch closely.

3. Is now a good time to invest? Here’s what 125 years of data suggests.

4. ❌ 7 prop firms banned this trader. This is a good example of why you need to be careful of prop firm complaints. It’s not always the firm’s fault.

🍪 Munchy Memes

Share Pip Munch

Chances are you have some trading friends. Why don’t you be a pal, share Pip Munch and earn some goodies for it?

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving The Trading Plan That Helped Me Pass 4 $100,000 FTMO Challenges.

Or copy and paste this link to others: https://pipmunch.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER