Market Update: Mon 25th Sep
The information in this message does not represent any financial or investment advice. They're just random thoughts in my head.
gm
**MACRO** - Equities didn't have the best of weeks last week after an FOMC that came out more hawkish than expected (thanks again JPOW) but Friday's close was mostly unchanged and futures are opening just a touch lower this morning. Something that I think is important to note, is despite commentary being rather hawkish, last week we saw central banks and policy makers across the UK, US, Japan and Switzerland all decide to hold rates rather than raise them. When you step back and zoom out I think that's a rather important and monumental point given the hiking backdrop we've seen for the past 18 months or so. The market may get disappointed that we aren't expecting more rate cuts next year, but it's important to note we are pretty much at the end of the hiking cycle...it's just a question of "wen" now. Wrt economic data there's not much this week but next Friday we'll have payrolls which will then kickstart the next slew of data. Labour market data gonna be very important here as Powell as started to acknowledge it's softening, and we'll be looking to see if that's a trend that'll increase.
**CRYPTO** - A rather quiet weekend sees BTC maintain a level just above 26K and ETH shedding a little bit to 1577. ETH/BTC has barely moved and still sits a fraction below 0.06 while it appears BTC dominance has fallen back below 50% in a move that seems rather surprising to me. ETH has spent most of the year being deflationary but it appears it's now once again inflationary (you can check it out on ultrasound.money). There's been some good performance in memecoins of late with $PEPE, $BITCOIN and $MOG all up about 15-30% off recent lows as some activity and focus resumes there. $RLB has been a very weak performer, down 24% on the week and 43% on the month despite the daily buybacks that are taking place there.
**NFTs & Misc** - Price action in pfp land is mostly flat and it doesn't appear that we've had any large moves for the past week although most things look lower on the month. Pudgy Penguins are the clear outperformer among bluechip NFTs in both of those time periods. We saw a large Beeple sale, a Politics is Bullshit edition trading for just under 80ETH, and last week's stolen Fidenza looks like it resold at just below 60ETH. While NFTs may feel dead, I was at ArtBlocks Marfa this weekend and can confirm the vibes are very much alive. I think it's important to differentiate between art and pfps, and I think the former has an extremely bright future and has performed rather well this year; it's just a bit more difficult for the average retail trader to understand how to cherry pick there compared to the commoditised pfps.
GL this week!