Last Week’s Market Wrap

Yesterday markets were calm compared to the last two weeks, when markets experienced enormous volatility due to bank failures, which started with the SVB Bank in California and then spread to other US banks, as well as European banks. Risk assets tumbled lower while safe havens surged, but the situation seems to have stabilized with the intervention of central banks and other major banks and financial institutions.

Central bankers have been trying to calm the situation too, with ECB’s Lagarde saying that they are very confident that capital and liquidity positions of the Euro area banks are well in excess of requirements. She closed the speech yesterday saying that “without tensions, we would have indicated that further hikes would be needed” which means that they might stop rate hikes soon, which is negative for the Euro.

This Week’s Market Expectations

Today started with the monetary policy meeting minutes from the Reserve Bank of Australia, which sounded on the dovish side. The German ZEW economic sentiment will be published shortly and is expected to show a softening in the sentiment, probably due to the banking crisis. The most important release will be the inflation report from Canada later though, which is expected to show a 2 point slowdown in February for the annualized number, although the MoM CPI (consumer price index) number is expected to remain unchanged at 0.5%.

Forex Signals Update

Last week was great for us, with 30 winning forex signals out of 38 trading signals, although the huge volatility also helped. Yesterday we opened five signals, as the volatility slowed, in commodities as well as in forex, and closed the day with one losing signal and four winning trading signals.

GOLD Breaking Above $2,000 

Gold continues to show strength this month, as the bullish momentum has picked up. It was heading toward the $2,000 level and broke that major zone yesterday. We continue to remain long on Gold since the bounce the week before and opened 12 trades here, ending up with 10 winning Gold signals.

XAU/USD – 60 minute chart 

WTI Retracing Above the 20 SMA

Crude Oil had the works week since late 2021. US WTI crude formed a support zone above the $70 level, while the 100 SMA (green) was acting as resistance on  the daily chart. The highs were getting lower though, which indicated that sellers still had the upper hand. The support zone was broken and us Oil closed the week around $66.30.

US Oil – H4 chart

Cryptocurrency Update

Cryptocurrencies continue to take advantage from all the uncertainties with the traditional banking sector. They started surging higher and continue to pushed to new highs for the year, as Bitcoin heads for $30,000. Buyers seem to be in total control and every dip is finding strong bids.

The 20 SMA Keeps Supporting BITCOIN

Bitcoin has resumed the bullish momentum again after finding support at the 20 SMA (gray) on the H4 chart, which has been supporting the price since the return above $20,000. We saw a retreat to this moving average yesterday, but a doji candlestick formed above it and the price started to reverse higher.

BTC/USD – H4 chart

ETHEREUM Breaking Above $1,800

Ethereum pushed above moving averages in January which soon turned into support, particularly the 200 SMA (purple) on the daily timeframe chart. This moving average has turned into support, holding ETH/USD twice during retreats lower. We saw the last bounce off this moving average earlier this month and now the price is heading for $2,000.

ETH/USD – Daily chart