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 - So yesterday we saw inflation come in at 7.1% vs 7.3% expectations and core inflation come in at 6% vs 6.1% expectations. Both were positive "misses" and as expected we saw an initial market rally which got faded as the day went on. SPX closed 0.7% higher having been 2.5% higher at one stage, and NDQ closed 1% higher having been 3% higher at one stage. Interest rates did see a larger move that was sustained, particularly at the 2Y point which ended the day a whopping 17bps lower to 4.19%. My read on the equity market "underperforming as to what we would have expected" is that it's probably a sign of positioning. It's all but clear now to the market which way inflation is headed and maybe a lot of the market was positioned for these numbers (and thank fuck we hit the numbers coz I think we would have sold off big if we didn't). Next thing will be keeping an eye on various economic data such as payrolls, consumer sentiment etc to give us an idea of the broader health of the economy which is now in question. Today we have the FOMC and I'm very curious to see if Powell will finally change his tune with regard to monetary policy for 2023. The market expects a 50bp hike and anything less or more would certainly be a surprise and cause a big market move IMO (75bp = big selloff, 25bp = big rally).
CRYPTO - Interestingly, we saw the gains in crypto actually hold yesterday as BTC and ETH rallied to 17.9K and 1330 respectively which were about 5% moves. I wonder if that tells you positioning in crypto or not but as I keep commenting for the last few weeks now I think crypto is poised to see a big recovery post FTX, no contagion news is good news here. $APE has been a notable underperformer as it still sits just above $4 but is more than 10% off its recent highs a couple of days ago. My assumption there is that the majority of people are farming rewards and probably instantly selling/monetising it. One thing to note for $APE is we know that Yuga are set to make a big announcement on Christmas, dubbed to be "The Trial of Jimmy the Monkey" which is a roadmap item. I would imagine there will be speculation that builds up into that that it will be something that requires $APE to participate in. Whether or not that will be the reality, I'm unsure, but certainly expect speculation.
NFTs - Valhalla seems to have the current limelight posting over 1K ETH of volumes which saw its floor price rise by 50% to 1.5ETH. Elsewhere we had another big volume day on rektguy yesterday which saw a price maintain of over 1ETH before dipping back below on almost 300ETH of volumes. We've started to see more activity in the "usual bluechips" such as MAYC, Azuki, Otherdeed etc but the actual number of sales there seems relatively low as a lot of the market continues to be focused on whatever is the "hot new thing" each day/week. I think I would continue to reiterate that December ends up being a good month for NFTs and I think that there is a good chance that is sustained thru January with the $BLUR airdrop and calendar effect.
GL today!