MARKETS week ahead: January 22 - 27
Last week in the news
The market optimism continues to hold on financial markets for the second trading week in a year. The S&P 500 reached new all-time highs, surpassing the highs from the year 2022, reaching level of 4.840 on Friday. As USD gained a bit in strength, the US Treasury yields followed the path, while Gold remained relatively stable during the week. The crypto market continues to slow down after the approval of the first BTC ETF, with Bitcoin ending the week above the 41K.
The most important news from the previous week is certainly a new ATH of S&P 500, reached at Friday`s trading session. The highest level reached was 4.840, still strongly supported by the tech companies. Investors continue to trade with a positive sentiment at the beginning of this year, supported by the good economic performance of the US economy and in expectation of forthcoming rate cuts. However, CNBC summarized the current market sentiment as investors "focus on good and ignore the bad, no matter how bad the bad parts might look sometimes". The “bad” part relates to the Fed`s expectations of a slow down of the US economy in the coming period, as well as currently strong geopolitical uncertainties.
The annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was another topic which occupied the news during the previous week. Considering that this meeting gathers all important world economic and political leaders, it is closely watched by investors. When it comes to the EU economy, the ECB President, Christine Lagarde noted that the economy will most certainly not return into a “normality” during this year, but is more positive when it comes to developments in 2025. She sees consumption, trade and inflation as topics which need to return to the “normal”, which means to the levels prior to the pandemic. However, on the opposite side was German Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, who perceived developments in 2023 as a “new normal” in contrast to Lagarde`s “normalization”. He is supporting his standing taking into account current trends in the world, which is characterized with high geopolitical uncertainty, high oil prices, higher debt levels and low global growth perspectives, but he also noted developments around artificial intelligence.
News is reporting that JPMorgan analysts are giving the 50% chance for the first ETH ETF to be approved. Their standing is supported by the fact of currently many outstanding SEC lawsuits against crypto exchangers for their product of staking crypto coins, where majority of the staking products is related to ETH. In this sense, the Bank analysts are noting, until these are resolved the SEC might postpone its decision on Ark21Shares filing for the spot ETH ETF, which is due on 23th May this year. At the same time, ARK and its founder Cathie Wood are shorting holdings of BITO (ProShares Bitcoin ETF) and are moving funds into its own ARKB, the bitcoin ETF, as per news reports.
Crypto market cap
While stock equities are again in the spotlight of investors, pushing the S&P 500 index to its highest levels ever, the crypto market continues to slow down for the second week in a row. There is a modest transfer of funds, where speculative money, invested in expectation of the significant increase in the price of BTC after the approval of the BTC ETF, is now searching for new opportunities for a short term profits outside the crypto market. Although it seems that the fun days of BTC and ETH are over, still, the crypto futures market is showing a completely different picture. Namely, investor’s expectations for the future price of BTC are quite positive, where futures maturing in December 2025 reached the price above the 47K level within the first week of trading. Total crypto market capitalization decreased by 3% on a weekly basis, with an outflow of 50B in the value of the market. Daily trading volumes also dropped to the level of around 99B on a daily basis, from 174B traded two weeks ago. Total crypto market capitalization decrease since the beginning of this year stands at 3%.
For the second week in a row, Bitcoin is the coin which is mostly dragging the crypto market to the downside. Although two weeks ago the crypto market was traded in a mixed manner, still, during the previous week the majority of crypto coins lost in value. BTC finished the week 3% lower from the week before, losing more than 25B in value. ETH followed the path of BTC, with a drop in value of almost 4% or $12,2B. Among significant weekly losers in nominal terms were XRP, with a drop in value of 1.3B or 4.3%, Cardano was down by 1.2B or 6%, Polkadot was down by 1.4B or almost 14% on a weekly basis. Among other coins which lost in value were Ethereum Classic, with a drop of 15%, Bitcoin Gold was down by 20%, while Miota and Algorand lost more than 10% in value. There were only a few coins who finished the week with a gain, like Binance Coin, which managed to attract more than 11B in value, increasing it by 2.3%, while LINK managed to increase its value by 11.4%.
Increased activity with circulating coins also continues for the second week in a row. The most significant change occurred with BNB coins, where 1.4% of circulating coins were withdrawn from the market. At the same time, Polkadot decreased the level of circulating coins by 3% within a single week. The majority of other altcoins had a modest increase in coin on the market, ranging around 0.1%, where Polygon had an surge of 0.6% while Maker`s number of coins were up by 0.2%.
Crypto futures market
In line with the spot market, the crypto futures market also slowed down during the previous week. Still, developments are showing that investors continue to be positive about the future prices of both BTC and ETH. Previous week two new maturities were listed on the CME for both coins, for June 2025 and December 2025. During the first week of trading, BTC`s December 2025 futures ended the week at price above the 47K, while ETH futures for the same maturity were closed at price $2.728.
BTC`s short term futures dropped by more than 4%, but still were trading above the 41K. Although longer term futures dropped by more than 11%, still the prices were holding above 43K. Futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at price of $43.860, while March 2025 was last traded at $44.675.
ETH short term futures were last traded lower by more than 1% compared to the previous week, while longer term ones were down by less than 6%. Futures maturing in December this year were last traded at price $2.584, while those maturing in March 2025 closed the week at price $2.618.
The market optimism continues to hold on financial markets for the second trading week in a year. The S&P 500 reached new all-time highs, surpassing the highs from the year 2022, reaching level of 4.840 on Friday. As USD gained a bit in strength, the US Treasury yields followed the path, while Gold remained relatively stable during the week. The crypto market continues to slow down after the approval of the first BTC ETF, with Bitcoin ending the week above the 41K.
The most important news from the previous week is certainly a new ATH of S&P 500, reached at Friday`s trading session. The highest level reached was 4.840, still strongly supported by the tech companies. Investors continue to trade with a positive sentiment at the beginning of this year, supported by the good economic performance of the US economy and in expectation of forthcoming rate cuts. However, CNBC summarized the current market sentiment as investors "focus on good and ignore the bad, no matter how bad the bad parts might look sometimes". The “bad” part relates to the Fed`s expectations of a slow down of the US economy in the coming period, as well as currently strong geopolitical uncertainties.
The annual gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, was another topic which occupied the news during the previous week. Considering that this meeting gathers all important world economic and political leaders, it is closely watched by investors. When it comes to the EU economy, the ECB President, Christine Lagarde noted that the economy will most certainly not return into a “normality” during this year, but is more positive when it comes to developments in 2025. She sees consumption, trade and inflation as topics which need to return to the “normal”, which means to the levels prior to the pandemic. However, on the opposite side was German Minister of Finance, Christian Lindner, who perceived developments in 2023 as a “new normal” in contrast to Lagarde`s “normalization”. He is supporting his standing taking into account current trends in the world, which is characterized with high geopolitical uncertainty, high oil prices, higher debt levels and low global growth perspectives, but he also noted developments around artificial intelligence.
News is reporting that JPMorgan analysts are giving the 50% chance for the first ETH ETF to be approved. Their standing is supported by the fact of currently many outstanding SEC lawsuits against crypto exchangers for their product of staking crypto coins, where majority of the staking products is related to ETH. In this sense, the Bank analysts are noting, until these are resolved the SEC might postpone its decision on Ark21Shares filing for the spot ETH ETF, which is due on 23th May this year. At the same time, ARK and its founder Cathie Wood are shorting holdings of BITO (ProShares Bitcoin ETF) and are moving funds into its own ARKB, the bitcoin ETF, as per news reports.
Crypto market cap
While stock equities are again in the spotlight of investors, pushing the S&P 500 index to its highest levels ever, the crypto market continues to slow down for the second week in a row. There is a modest transfer of funds, where speculative money, invested in expectation of the significant increase in the price of BTC after the approval of the BTC ETF, is now searching for new opportunities for a short term profits outside the crypto market. Although it seems that the fun days of BTC and ETH are over, still, the crypto futures market is showing a completely different picture. Namely, investor’s expectations for the future price of BTC are quite positive, where futures maturing in December 2025 reached the price above the 47K level within the first week of trading. Total crypto market capitalization decreased by 3% on a weekly basis, with an outflow of 50B in the value of the market. Daily trading volumes also dropped to the level of around 99B on a daily basis, from 174B traded two weeks ago. Total crypto market capitalization decrease since the beginning of this year stands at 3%.
For the second week in a row, Bitcoin is the coin which is mostly dragging the crypto market to the downside. Although two weeks ago the crypto market was traded in a mixed manner, still, during the previous week the majority of crypto coins lost in value. BTC finished the week 3% lower from the week before, losing more than 25B in value. ETH followed the path of BTC, with a drop in value of almost 4% or $12,2B. Among significant weekly losers in nominal terms were XRP, with a drop in value of 1.3B or 4.3%, Cardano was down by 1.2B or 6%, Polkadot was down by 1.4B or almost 14% on a weekly basis. Among other coins which lost in value were Ethereum Classic, with a drop of 15%, Bitcoin Gold was down by 20%, while Miota and Algorand lost more than 10% in value. There were only a few coins who finished the week with a gain, like Binance Coin, which managed to attract more than 11B in value, increasing it by 2.3%, while LINK managed to increase its value by 11.4%.
Increased activity with circulating coins also continues for the second week in a row. The most significant change occurred with BNB coins, where 1.4% of circulating coins were withdrawn from the market. At the same time, Polkadot decreased the level of circulating coins by 3% within a single week. The majority of other altcoins had a modest increase in coin on the market, ranging around 0.1%, where Polygon had an surge of 0.6% while Maker`s number of coins were up by 0.2%.
Crypto futures market
In line with the spot market, the crypto futures market also slowed down during the previous week. Still, developments are showing that investors continue to be positive about the future prices of both BTC and ETH. Previous week two new maturities were listed on the CME for both coins, for June 2025 and December 2025. During the first week of trading, BTC`s December 2025 futures ended the week at price above the 47K, while ETH futures for the same maturity were closed at price $2.728.
BTC`s short term futures dropped by more than 4%, but still were trading above the 41K. Although longer term futures dropped by more than 11%, still the prices were holding above 43K. Futures maturing in December 2024 ended the week at price of $43.860, while March 2025 was last traded at $44.675.
ETH short term futures were last traded lower by more than 1% compared to the previous week, while longer term ones were down by less than 6%. Futures maturing in December this year were last traded at price $2.584, while those maturing in March 2025 closed the week at price $2.618.
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