The information in this message does not represent any financial or investment advice. They're just random thoughts in my head.
gm
MACRO - We had a pretty grim close to equities on Friday with SPX closing 2.4% lower and NDQ 3% lower, meaning both had a weekly close just off the YTD lows. Futures are seeing a small relief bounce this morning, up just shy of 1% on both. Interest rates are seeing a small rally this morning but still remain pretty much at YTD highs, 445/420/397/396bps is where we are on 2s/5s/10s/30s. Worth noting that oil has shed some strength from recent highs putting it at $86. I think it's worth checking out this thread from Raoul Pal:
I'm certainly not one for overlaying charts but there is some rhyme and reason for sure, a lot of it IMO is to do with asset managers (or even banks) trying to lock in performance or set a clean slate for the new year which usually involves "de-risking". "De-risking" doesn't mean selling longs, it also means taking off shorts or unwinding hedges. I am a strong believer in seasonality of markets and Q4 is often a cleansing period. From most of my conversations it still feels pretty consensus that we have a year-end rally followed by further weakness or flatlining in 2023. I think that'll be the case too, just not sure what happens in 2023, if we make new lows or if we just continue to grind around here. I'm still looking for/hoping for some communication wrt a Fed pivot in H2 2023. Shelter inflation is the thorn in our arses atm but that usually is lagged by around 6 months, so gotta think it resolves at some point next year (indeed other housing indicators are certainly pointing to moves lower).
CRYPTO - Pretty robust price action since last week's lows which sees BTC back above 19K and ETH back above 1300. My gut remains that a bunch of people tried to short crypto ahead of last week's inflation number (maybe with the thought that it's massively outperformed equities in the last 4 months) but indeed that looks like a bad trade, at least in the last 48H. I still see a lot of people talking about a big "capitulation event" and again that feels so consensus now that IDK if it will happen. We had a decent capitulation in June and since then it's just been pretty rangebound between 1275-1725, the longer you wait for a capitulation the more we get closer to things getting fixed and you just run the risk of missing it. So IDK, let's see. Everything is still data-driven rn. One thing to note on our fav altcoin $APE is that there is an AIP proposal to implement a 2-4 week bug-hunting bounty program. This would delay staking (currently planned to launch on 31st October) to mid November. I think some sort of delay has been discussed for a while and I guess our fears seem to be correct. It doesn't appear $APE has moved meaningfully on this, it doesn't really change anything for me because I think the price impact will mainly come on the day of staking, it just means we have to wait a little longer and go through more vol (we now probably have to go through an FOMC and midterms lol).
NFTs - Pretty quiet volumewise in the last 24H. Genuine Undead leads the volume charts having done 279E of volume accompanies by a 30% increase in the floor price. Elsewhere price action looks mostly unchanged across the board while listings look like they're ticking down. Hard to judge whether that's as a result of things expiring or things selling. Worth noting in the Azuki complex there have been a few large 100E+ sales on rares, and we've seen that remain relatively stable now around the 10E mark and Beanz just below 1E. I think keep an eye out there, seems to be having some good traction.
GL this week!
-OSF