MARKETS week ahead: April 1 – 7Last week in the news
Positive market sentiment continued ahead of the holiday season on western markets. The S&P 500 was closed at level of 5.254, which was the new highest level reached in the history of the index. Although USD gained in value, the price of Gold also headed to the higher grounds, ending the week at 2.233, a new ATH. The US Treasuries remained relatively stable during the week. Bitcoin reached for one more time levels above $70K, while the crypto market spent another week trading within a positive territory.
The core personal consumption expenditures price index, a Fed's favorite inflation gauge, rose 0.3% in February, bringing it to a total increase of 2.8% on a yearly basis. The news was released on a Good Friday, a holiday in Western countries, so the market will most probably continue after-the-holiday season pricing the positive inflation developments. Speaking at the Economic Club of New York gathering, Fed Governor Christopher Waller noted that there is no rush for cutting interest rates. He saw a rationale in keeping interest rates at current levels for longer to help inflation on its “sustainable trajectory toward 2%”.
CoinDesk is reporting that the market for tokenized U.S. Treasury debt is in its “booming” phase. Analysts from the crypto firm 21.co noted in a report that the total value of tokenized Treasury notes reached levels of above $1 billion. Tokenization has been done through several public blockchains like Ethereum, Polygon, Avalanche, Stellar and few others. These tokens can be traded on the blockchain. The increase in trading tokenized Treasuries has particularly boomed after BlackRock announced its tokenized fund BUIDL on Ethereum network. As reported, the BlackRock`s funds BUIDL had a strong inflow during the first week on the market, collecting $245 million in deposits, out of which Ondo Finance alone transferred $95 million.
The London Stock Exchange will allow listings of the exchange traded notes (ETNs) for bitcoin and ether coins. Trading of these assets will start on May 28th this year and will be available to institutional investors only. All listings on the LSE will be a subject of the approval of the Financial Conduct Authority. The FCA noted that requests from Recognized Investment Exchanges will not be turned down.
A CEO of the BlackRock, the largest US asset manager, Larry Fink, released his annual investor letter, where he noted a concern regarding “providing for retirement”. He is of the opinion that Social Security and other retirement assets need to be rethought from the perspective of their long-term inclusion into capital markets. He also commented on overspending by the US Government, which is creating increasing debt. His proposal for the solution of the issue is to create a public-private partnership in order to finance infrastructure projects.
Crypto market cap
It was another positive week on the crypto market. Although the majority of the market is positioning for the expected Fed rate cuts during the course of this year, the crypto community turned their discussion to the topic of forthcoming Bitcoin halving. There is a question of its impact on the price of Bitcoin, considering that rewards for bitcoin miners will be halved. On a positive side is that this halving will increase the supply of new bitcoins until the maximum of 21 million BTC`s is finally reached. Analysts are arguing that more supply of BTC will increase its transactions and its further adoption by people and institutions. With increasing demand and limited supply, the price of BTC could be expected to increase. However, this is only an opinion of several analysts, and whether this scenario will actually occur on the market is up to be seen during April. During the previous week total crypto market capitalization was increased by 6%, adding total $141B to the market. The market cap is holding well above $2.5 trillion. Daily trading volumes continue to be at higher levels, dropping a bit as of the end of the week, due to the Holiday on the Western markets, but still with high $131B on a daily basis. Total crypto market capitalization increase from the end of the previous year, currently stands at $923B, which represents a 56% surge from the beginning of this year.
Majority of coins gained during the previous week. Bitcoin was the one which led the market to the upside, with a total inflow of $87B, which increased its market cap by 6.8%. Ether also had a positive week, by adding $15.2B to its value, increasing it by 3.7%. Another coin with very good weekly performance was Solana, which added almost $ 10B to its value, surging by 12.7% within a week. Binance Coin continues to add to its value, increasing it by $6.8B or 8.1%. This week DOGE was in the spotlight of the market, with a surge in value of $3.5B or 14.3%. Bitcoin Cash performed well during the week, ending it with an increase in value of $2.45B or more than 26%. Within the higher gainers, it should be mentioned Litecoin, which added $1.13B to the market cap increasing it by 17.5%. Other weekly gainers with excellent performance in relative terms were Maker, who increased its value by almost 20%, Solana was up by 12.7%, Miota was up by 11%, while NEO surged by 9.6%. There were only a few losing coins, where Monero lost 4.37% of its value on a weekly basis.
As for coins in circulation, increased activity continues. Filecoin added 0.6% of new coins to the market, Polkadot`s coins in circulation were higher by 0.2%, while Stellar managed to add 0.3% to its circulating coins. Tether should be especially mentioned, as it managed to continuously add new coins to the market, where last week this number was 0.5% higher from the week before.
Crypto futures market
The crypto futures reflected the positive market sentiment from the spot market during the previous week. Both BTC and ETH futures were traded higher from the previous week, for all maturities. BTC short term futures ended the week around 11% higher from the end of the week before, while the long term ones were up by almost 5%. Futures maturing in December this year ended the week at $73.435, while those maturing in December next year were closed at price $78.255. The highest value reached for this maturity was $79.235, three weeks ago, with currently high probability that these levels can be reached again in a short future period.
ETH futures were traded around 7% higher from the week before, however, long term ones were up by relatively modest 1.1% on a weekly basis. Futures maturing in December this year ended the trading week at level $3.700, while those maturing a year later were last traded at price $3.856.
