EQUOS — Morning Update — November 19th
The COVID vaccines are not a cure-all for the markets. While Pfizer reported trials now show a 95% effectiveness rate (putting them on par with Moderna), equities in the US still closed lower. The restrictions in the US and many other countries across the globe overshadowed the positive news.
Both the S&P and the Nasdaq fell over 1% while the dollar remains constrained at this year’s low. Gold did not benefit and neither did treasuries. Markets felt sluggish, with the exception of oil, maybe, inching higher. Early trading in Asia looks set to continue either down or flat.
On the BTC front, disregarding the fact that we touched intraday highs of $18,476, the session looks set to close in the green but freakishly close to flat — we’re at $17,750. The doji candle this price action has formed is interesting after such a ramp-up. Naturally, everyone is still looking at the 20K mark, around 10% up.
There’s been quite a lot of back and forth about a rumor regarding Chinese miners and selling difficulties via local OTC desks. Some would think the rally was helped by their inability to sell as much as usual. It’ll be interesting to see whether the rumors are true and, if they are, what will happen when they can cash in.
Speaking of miners, it’s really interesting to see that their revenue is now back to pre-halving levels (currently earning about 17M per day, or twice as much as compared to May, when the block reward halved to 6.25BTC). This is with the exception of the OKEx mining pool, whose hashpower fell about 99.5% after the withdrawal suspensions (ouch).
In the alts realm, ETH is flat, but is somehow holding around the just-breached resistance level of $480 — which I choose to see as a positive for now. Other alts are staying in line, like good little soldiers following their captain to close unchanged, with the exception of BCH, DASH, and ZEC, which all fell between 3%-6%.
Lastly, two key data points you should take a look at: 1. The number of new BTC addresses just hit the same (high) level as Jan 2018, with the difference that this is now a very positive point, and 2. The on-exchange whale ration (courtesy of CryptoQuant) is still impressively low and suggests no big player is gearing up to dump anything anytime soon. The future looks bright.
