The information in this message does not represent any financial or investment advice. They're just random thoughts in my head.
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**MACRO** - Important day today as we get the Fed's interest rate decision followed by their press conference. The expectation is for the Fed to hold the base rate at 5.5%, but there continues to be a lot of talk about hawkishness, "higher for longer" narrative etc etc. IMO I don't think there's been enough data for the Fed to change their tune. Since the last FOMC we've had headline inflation rise (due to energy prices) alongside core inflation fall (due to shelter) while labour market data has shown clear signs of softening. I think there is a possibility that JPOW acknowledges the labour market softening (which markets would like) but my expectation is that he is likely to mention that energy prices (mainly oil) are a risk and they will have to wait to see more data before being able to make a decision on when to cut. I feel like markets are a bit scared going into the FOMC and 2Y interest rates remain elevated at 5.05%, so there is some room to rally if we get the slightest bit of dovishness and I would definitely be wary of that. Stocks are starting the day modestly in the green and well see how things shape up at 2PM EST and after.
**CRYPTO** - It's truly all a bitcoin story atm as BTC has managed to hold onto a rough 27.2K level while everything else appears to have shed yesterday's gains. ETH/BTC is now at 0.59, that's a 17% outperformance of BTC over ETH YTD and we are at the lowest level we've seen in 12 months. The last time the ratio was lower was back in June 2022 when ETH went sub 1k after a lot of forced selling. There's a lot of commentary out there suggesting BTC will continue to gain market share (its dominance climbing to 50.3% now), and while I think that could be right short term, it just makes me want to be long other stuff at this moment in time for a higher beta play for next year if we do see the start of a bull run. We'll see if the FOMC has any impact on crypto today, we haven't had much correlation of late but BTC just feels like it wants to run here so I wouldn't be surprised if a positive outcome caused that. Maybe people have some colour on ETF approvals IDK.
**NFTs & Misc** - Flat price action on pfps with just $8.6m trading yesterday, in line with the current run rate of volumes. One project worth mentioning is Sugartown Oras which climbed to a high of 0.4ETH yesterday before dropping back down to 0.33ETH, I believe from a free mint and some form of Zynga association. Nice to see that some projects can still benefit from upwards price action. Elsewhere the art world continues to thrive with Defaced's SuperRare genesis 1/1 piece yielding a 30.7ETH bid with 2 days left to go. In FriendTech land we continue to see aggressive user growth, up 103% on the new users number adding an additional 17k yesterday. Despite that, the daily buy volume has subsided by 18% to $5.32m with total volume dropping by 16% and TVL dropping by 1% which explains some of the price drops we've seen across keys. IMO key prices will probably be volatile from here and it's going to be a game of picking and choosing the right horses (I personally would try to focus on those chats that are active on FT as those participants are prob more likely to be trying to boost their values).
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That's it for today, GL!