Archives of “March 2021” month

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UBS reportedly may face at least low-three-digit millions losses from Archegos Capital fallout

  
  Analysis
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The hit to banks continue to unfold

The figure is being reported by Finews, citing a person familiar with the matter. UBS has been mum over the situation as Credit Suisse had earlier in the week warn of a “significant and material” hit to its Q1 performance from the Archegos Capital fallout.
The report says that the hit to UBS isn’t such that it will materially impact the firm’s quarterly profits nor trigger a warning, despite still having positions to be unwound.

PIMCO’s latest outlook – the firm likes a higher USD and higher equities

  
  Analysis

Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) is a US firm that manages circa US$1.9 trillion in assets.

Some points of interest from their latest quarterly outlook (bolding mine):
forecasting
  • “a strong global recovery in 2021 amid significant fiscal support, accommodative monetary policy, diminishing lockdowns, and accelerating vaccinations”
  • an expected temporary bump in inflation in the coming months
  • inflation generally will remain below central bank targets over the next one to two years
  • markets may remain focused on inflation risks in the near term, contributing to elevated volatility

We seek to maintain portfolio flexibility and liquidity to be able to respond to events as they unfold


We see opportunities in COVID-recovery sectors, including housing, industrial/aerospace, and select banks and financials. 
More:
  • PIMCO expect global economic growth circa 6% this year
  • An on hold for longer Fed translates to the firm liking continued modest upside for the USD
  • Stays overweight equities (preference for US and Asia stocks), preference for cyclical vs. defensives
Pacific Investment Management Company (PIMCO) is a US firm that manages circa US$1.9 trillion in assets.

The US Indices close lower on the day

  
Analysis, US Market

Nasdaq can’t hold late day gains into the close

The major US indices are closing lower on day. The Nasdaq was the only index, that moved into the black today. It was up as much as 0.12% at the highs, but gave up those gains into the close. The Nasdaq index did retrace a -137 point decline (-1.05% decline at the low).

Below are the breakdowns of the high,low, changes, etc. for the major North American indices (and volatility index).

Nasdaq can't hold late day gains into the close
Below is a summary of the % changes for the major global indices. The European shares all closed higher.
% changes of the major indices

EURUSD falls to lowest level since early November 2020. New low for the month.

  
Analysis, Forex

Falls below daily trend line.

The EURUSD has continued its move lower after a choppy but lower session on Monday. The pair is working on its 5 day down in 6 and in the process, has moved to a new low for the month and trades at the lowest level since November 4, 2020.
Falls below daily trend line.
Looking at the daily chart above, the pair cracked below a lower trend line cutting across at 1.1748 today. That is near the swing low from November 11 at 1.17449.  That area is now close risk for sellers looking for more downside. Stay below the break, keeps the sellers in control.  The next target on the daily is the 38.2% of teh move up from the March 2020 low which comes in at 1.16947 (around the 1.1700 level). The currently price is at 1.1730 – just off the low for the day at 1.1728.
Drilling to the hourly chart below, the pair stalled the rallies yesterday near a topside trendline. The parallel channel trendline on the downside target 1.1719 currently (and moving lower).  A move below would have traders targeting the 1.16947 retracement on the daily (with 1.1700 a natural support target as well).
The EURUSD on the hourly chart
In addition to the resistance on the daily chart at 1.1745-48 area, the EURUSD fell below a floor on the hourly at 1.1761 area.   That too will be eyed now as resistance (and a bias level) that would keep the sellers in control.

Musk money: Report on global admission of the Bitcoin market

  
Analysis, BITCOIN

Can Bitcoin be labelled as ‘Musk money’?

FXL
Elon Musk, the man, the billionaire, has a series of companies that include SpaceEx and Tesla, the two giants of their respective fields.

Before creating a plethora of startups that would later become multi-billion-dollar firms, Elon Musk created PayPal. He has stated that he didn’t like the whole idea of banks being involved in payments.

Later, Elon created Tesla because he was unsure of the conventional way cars were being made. The point being, Musk always did what he wanted to do. He didn’t like the way payments were being made. He made a new payment method. He didn’t like the way cars were running; he created Tesla.

Recently, Elon Musk revealed in an official statement that his company had already invested more than a billion dollars in cryptocurrency and will start taking bitcoin as a payment method.

Is it safe to say that bitcoin is Musk money? Let’s have a look.

In 2018 Elon Musk tweeted that bitcoin would crash, and he also said that it would cross the fifty grand mark in the stock market. Bitcoin never really hit, and it sure passed the fifty thousand dollar mark recently to equate all of this.

Later in 2020, Michael Sayor suggested Elon Musk convert his books into BTC instead of dollars. In response, Musk asked whether these transactions could actually take place. In a reverted response, Musk was given an idea of how to do so.

Later on, Tesla announced that it had just bought more than a billion dollars worth of bitcoin and soon started taking bitcoin as a payment mode for the company.

Bitcoin needs no introduction. It began circulating in the market way back in 209 when people didn’t have a single shred of an idea of what it could do. Fast forward to 2021. The cryptocurrency now trades at more than fifty thousand dollars.

With a lot of other cryptocurrencies, bitcoin has seen a recent upsurge.

Ripple has seen an upsurge since 2017. It is made out of the blockchain tech used by bitcoin and has a lot of different uses. The price of ripple saw a lot of volatility after the speculations of Japanese testing the currency hit the market.

Even Ethereum began trading at eight dollars but currently trades on more than eighteen hundred dollars.

This is seen as the closest competitor to bitcoin. The reason being, Ethereum can be used at the backend to create decentralised applications, making it a whole different operating system and a tradable cryptocurrency at the same time.

Apart from Elon Musk, bitcoin has the blessings of people like the first rapper billionaire JayZ and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. Both have created a fund of more than twenty-four million dollars that will primarily focus on cryptocurrency development in Africa and India. This is additional money after Tesla’s more than one billion investment.

Bitcoin is often termed as “Musk money” because its volatility is subject to tweets that Musk does. For example, once Elon Musk changed his Twitter bio to #Bitcoin, and the cryptocurrency saw a surge of more than 20% also, since the last statements about the goliath investments by Tesla in the firm, bitcoin has crossed the fifty thousand dollar mark.

Since its inception, cryptocurrencies have seen many ups and downs, and many people want the decentralised payment system to be inoculated by the daily working people.

A new funding model is introduced by brink, aiming to channel developer-based donations from various sources such as non-profit organisations and high-end individuals like the example mentioned earlier of rap legend JayZ and the current Twitter CEO.

The initial funding of brink came from Wenses Casares, who founded the crypto custodian xapo. Other donors include the likes of Kraken, a human rights foundation and square crypto, a famous crypto platform.

Another crucial thing that happened, resulting in another upsurge, was bitcoin’s TapRoot upgrade. This helped increase the privacy features and, at the same time, enhance the functionality of the smart contract.

There are different mining pools, and more than 50% of them have shown support for this step. This clearly shows that bitcoin use cases are in a constant loop of evolution. In other words, if people think that this is all that bitcoin has got, they have to wait and should lookout for more.

How can this little update reflect in share prices are important, and let us have a look?

The program of the crypto market goliath is relatively simple. It is good at somethings and bad at somethings. In contrast, Ethereum is relatively complex and can execute a good range of decentralised apps.

While bitcoin can not even come close to Ethereum in terms of flexibility, little improvements result in a value storage utility. Ethereum is complex and hence renders a larger surface area for a possible cyber-attack.

It can be easy to think that bitcoin is just a machine and nothing else but tone should never leave the history untouched, which made it like that. The probability of corrections in the tech lies in the number of people that work in that direction. As they increase, so does the chances of increased stability of the cryptocurrency.

Several brokers are still optimistic about cryptocurrency trading, like HFTrading, for example.

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