Tensions are running high in the face of the bitcoin hard fork scheduled for next week but the price is running higher. As I start writing to you today, a multi-national conference is underway in Danang Vietnam. This conference had two keynote speakers, arguably the two most powerful men in the world at the moment, Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. The two men could hardly be more opposite when it comes to their views on international cooperation and globalization. Mr. Trump expressed the view that multi-national partnerships are harmful to individual states and that countries should seek direct bilateral partnerships.
Mr. Jinping, on the other hand, used the stage to promote his Belt and Roads initiative, which is a massive multi-national project that Xi has been pushing over the past few years. The financial markets remained rather indifferent to all this as it seems to have bigger things on the agenda.
Market Overview
Donald Trump has been on his best behavior during his Asian tour so far. Though he has more or less stuck to his guns about the main issues, he has been a bit more defensive than usual in the last few days.
So far, the strategy seems to be working for him. Just this morning, China announced that they would be opening their financial markets to more foreign investments. This is part of their long term strategy to make China the global center for business.
Despite Trump’s seemingly successful new strategy, stocks in the United States saw some notable declines yesterday. As we’ve been discussing, the main driver at the moment is tax reforms, and a report came out yesterday that it might not happen until 2019.
The Dow Jones fell about 320 points from its all time high (blue) to the lows of yesterday’s session (yellow) before seeing a miraculous recovery.
The USDollar remains very much in focus. Here’s the chart we posted the other day, as you can see we’re now near the bottom of the channel. This is where the Dollar recovery will be at its greatest test.
Also, take a look at oil. Flying high above its 200 day average price (blue).
Go Digital or Go Home
Of course, the biggest question on many eToro minds is Bitcoin. After the announcement that the chain split has been called off there was a brief surge in the price above $7800 but that didn’t last very long.
The price has moved from $2963 on September 15th to the all time high of $7872 on Wednesday. That represents a total gain of 165% in less than two months.
If we do get a retracement now, the Fibonacci lines indicate that the most likely first level of support would be at $6000.
Now, let’s zoom out and take a look at the “long term” trend…
Here we can see that we’ve veered off the major trend line (yellow). Of course, with all the excitement we’ve been seeing in bitcoin lately and the massive rate of adoption it’s certainly possible that we shoot straight to $10,000 from here.
However, we can see very defined levels of support on bitcoin. In the past year, every time it broke an all time high, it eventually came back down to build support. We can see the two most recent such levels on the chart above in blue and green.
What else?
Two holidays. Today is Veterans Day in the USA. So even though most markets will be open we could see a lot of traders heading out for the weekend a few hours early and liquidity is likely to get quite thin.
Tomorrow is Single’s Day in China. By far the biggest retail holiday in Asia, if not the world. A strong showing of purchases could give some much needed support for global markets.
