We’re in the first week of 2018 and the biggest fundamental event is the US employment report. The forex market seems to be trading without a clear direction, but the cryptocurrency market is not waiting for anyone. It has made a breakout on the top side, which is great news for us since we have a buy signal in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is pulling itself together again and pushing forward

Bitcoin Finally Makes A Move

The cryptocurrency market has recovered well after the crash right before Christmas. The decline stopped and most digital currencies have slowly crawled their way back up. Bitcoin retraced 50% higher right after the crash, then it moved lower again and in the last week, it has made its way back up, albeit slowly.

That hasn’t been the case with some naughty cryptocurrencies though. Ethereum has been surging this week and it broke the big level today. It jumped above the $1,000 level earlier this morning but it has slipped back below it now. Although, the $1,000 level has weakened now, so it won’t be a big deal for buyers to push above it again.

Ripple has been the other naughty crypto; it has appreciated about 1,500% in the last month. It used to trade around 20 cents a month ago, while now it trades around $3. It has also claimed the second place in terms of market capitalization.

Bitcoin was feeling a bit uncertain in the last few days, but it finally made its mind up and jumped higher. It has been trading between $14,000 and $15,000 during this time, but today it made the decisive move.

It climbed more than $1,000 in the last several hours, moving above $16,000. Now the trading zone for Bitcoin has shifted from below $15,000 to $16,000. We have a live buy signal here and at the moment we are about 1,000 pips in profit, so I’m pretty happy.

The breakout of the triangle I mentioned yesterday finally happened

Forex is Waiting for the US Employment Report

As we mentioned above, the US employment report today is the biggest event of the week. Yes, the Canadian employment report will be released at the same time and both these events have left out on the sidelines regarding USD/CAD.

A bearish chart setup has formed in this forex pair, but these two employment reports can send this pair anywhere so we’re staying out until they get published. This pair has been hanging around 1.25 for quite some time and that shows that CAD traders don’t want to take any sides right now.

GBP/USD moved up early in the morning and broke above the 50 SMA on the H1 chart. That was a bit unnerving for us since we had a sell forex signal here and we were counting on that moving average for resistance.

It reached 1.3577 but didn’t stay up there for too long. Reversed down and ended up just a few pips above the take profit target of our signal. We had to close our GBP/USD signal manually for around 20 pips of profit.

Commodity currencies have also traded sideways mostly. AUD/USD did slide lower earlier today. Although, that move opened up a trade opportunity for us which we took without much hesitation. Hoping that the US employment report won’t ruin the afternoon for us since all our fx signals today have closed in profit.

The US Employment numbers are expected to be around the same levels as last month. But the ADP employment report on Wednesday surprised us positively, so the market is expecting another slightly positive report today. If the numbers are negative though, I think that the buck to take another hit since it would let those expectations down.

Trades in Sight

Bullish AUD/USD

1. The trend is strongly bullish
2. An ascending channel has formed
3. The 20 SMA is providing support

The channel and the moving average are working together

We explained this forex signal in one of our previous forex updates, but this chart paints a clearer picture. The price has been following an upward channel rigorously this week and the 20 SMA has kept the uptrend in place. Now we are at the bottom of the channel, so it seemed and still seems like a good opportunity to go long which we did.

In Conclusion

The US and Canadian employment reports are about to be released. The market is almost frozen at the moment but the storm is coming. Watch the average earnings numbers because they will steal the show, if they deviate from expectations which are for a 0.3% reading.