There is some cautious optimism throughout markets but the big moves are in crypto, which is sizzling.
The most-compelling chart to me is ethereum , which is up 12% on the day and trading at the highs. This is still within the range of the past month but combined with the series of higher lows since mid-June and that it's come on a mixed day overall for market sentiment, and there might be something here.
Crypto hasn't given off a great forward-looking signal for risk assets in the past few weeks but for much of the year it was the leader. Generally it was a few hours ahead of other markets and we're not quite seeing that today but a 12% move means that someone is piling into an extremely risky and volatile asset that's been beaten up this year.
The July high in ETH/USD is $1275 and I think we would need to spend some time above that to confirm it but there's a strong signal from crypto today.
Could it simply be buyers who were waiting for the Celsius bankruptcy and for all the bad news to be 'in the market'? Maybe but it shows that there are at least some animal spirits out there.
