The potential of the cryptocurrency markets for intraday trading has seen yet another huge leap forward last night.  I mean, every trader knows by now that these markets have the ability to move fast but moves we’ve seen on Ripple are just ridiculous. Ripple tokens, known as XRP, have gone from less than 1 cent per coin on March 29th to more than 43 cents this morning!


Ripple is seen by alternative investors as being backed by the traditional financial institutions. The service is designed to replace the current Swfit system, which is slow and expensive and will soon be obsolete.
Last night, the founders of Ripple announced that they will lock up 55 Billion XRP in an escrow account in order to create price stability. However, since this represents more than half of the 100 Billion XRP total supply of the market, traders have increased the demand.
There’s no doubt in my mind that this is an extremely speculative market. The major banks have yet to embrace ripple and why should they?
Many of the largest banks in the world are working on something else at the moment, the Hyperledger. The Hyperledger project already has 110 of the world’s biggest financial institutions on board including American Express, IBM, JP Morgan, and the Bank of England.
Of course, we can’t really predict where this high-speed train will stop. It may continue on to $1 a coin or further, but what I can tell you is that financial institutions are not known to share their wealth. When they do decide on a blockchain they’re almost certain to ensure the money stays local and the public gets left holding the bag.

Market Overview

As we’ve seen many times before, all the headlines this morning are about President Trump but this time somehow seems different.
The controversies surrounding his Russian connection are almost too much for the broad markets to ignore. For now, the stock markets seem fine. Many analysts are calling this a “distraction” and all we’ve really seen is a slowdown of an extremely bullish market.
The currencies and commodities, on the other hand, are showing clear signs of safe haven trading.
After bouncing off support at $1216 a week ago, gold has continued to climb. Peter Fredy Burri has called the price beyond $1300 in this post on his wall.
As far as currencies go, when we’re thinking about safe havens, we need to talk about the Yen.
Here we can see the USDJPY falling about 200 pips over the last week, indicating that Asian investors are indeed looking for a safe place to stick their money.
The situation with Oil is a bit more sticky. Here, it’s not as clear if it’s leading the sentiment or following. I tend to think of it as the former.
After again failing to break the psychological resistance of $50 a barrel, we are seeing a bit of a pullback at the moment. The crude oil inventories out today could give some indication.
What is clear is that all investors are watching oil very closely at the moment. The Oil page on eToro is one of the most active market walls right now, aside from Bitcoin & Ethereum of course.

UK Labor & Earnings

With three weeks left to the general elections, the Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn has finally released their mission statement.
It does seem like a lost cause for Labour at the moment as they are only showing about 30% of the total vote according to recent polls. As we get closer to the voting, this charade is looking a lot more like a walk in the park for Theresa May.
So far, and ever since May’s ‘clean Brexit’ speech on January 17th (blue circle), a stronger May and a stronger conservative party have led to a stronger Pound Sterling.
On the technical side, the GBPUSD is still trying hard to break above 1.3000…
Many thanks to everyone reading these daily updates. I really appreciate all of your support. Your questions and comments are what keep me writing.
Have an awesome day ahead!!
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