What a comeback! Yesterday, the US stock market experienced what can only be described as a face-ripping rally.
One trading day after the US indices officially entered a bear market the Dow Jones soared 1086 points, it’s biggest single-day gain ever. The Nasdaq rose an unthinkable 6.32%, and the S&P500 put up its best performance since March 2009.
The stocks were egged on by President Trump, who made a bold call to buy the dip, before leaving for his surprise holiday trip to Iraq.
For anybody surprised by yesterday’s snap rally, let this serve as a reminder of the power of financial markets. These type of gains are actually quite common in a bear market. In fact, they’re even more common in a bear market.
@MatiGreenspan
eToro, Senior Market Analyst
Today’s Highlights
Slippery Trading
Spin Copper Into Gold
Crypto in Contrast
Please note: All data, figures & graphs are valid as of December 27th. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you can afford to lose.
Traditional Markets
Today we mark the 6th day of the US government shutdown. As I mentioned in yesterday’s update, trading during the holiday season can be a bit wonky. When volumes are low, prices tend to be a bit more slippery.
We can see that in oil as well, which fell 6.6% on Monday and rose 8% on Wednesday.
Russia has now indicated that they’ll do more to assist OPEC in stabilizing the price going into 2019, but at this point, it’s unclear what they can really do when even that announcement has appeared to cause volatility.
Another indication of this may be that Asian markets have not continued the US market’s enthusiasm, despite news that…
Spinning Copper into Gold
As a person who began his trading career in 2008, I’ve always been partial to keeping a bit of gold in my portfolio. It’s great for diversification purposes, as a hedge against risk and many traders recommend to hold between 5% and 20% on low leverage.
Yesterday, there was a rather shocking breakthrough out of China that some think could jeopardize this though.
Some on social media were quick to point out that they’ve figured out a way to “fork gold” and that this could have implications for bitcoin.
The headline here is rather misleading though. Yes, they found a way to chemically alter copper so that it produces a substance that has similar properties to gold but it is not gold itself.
The idea is that with some fine tunning copper may be able to step it up a bit in the manufacturing sector. Still, there’s little indication of how efficient this would be to do on a mass scale and no matter what, gold retains its status as the premier store of value.
In my mind, it is possible that someone figures out how to reproduce an ounce of gold in a lab, but it’s equally possible that someone figures out how to reproduce a bitcoin. Neither scenario seems very likely but both are certainly within the realm of possibility. This is why we diversify.
Crypto Quiet
In a strange instance of role reversal, the crypto markets remain calm and collected while the rest of the markets hop around like Mexican Jumping Beans.
Bitcoin continues to test its newfound support level of around $3,680.
Not sure what else we can say here, it’s been a blessedly quiet day. Hope you’re enjoying the holiday!
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