MARKETS week ahead: March 24 – 30

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Last week in the news

The Fed held interest rates unchanged during their FOMC meeting held the previous week, and stuck to its previous plan of two rate cuts during the course of this year. Still, uncertainties regarding moves from the US Administration are strongly interfering investors decisions, in which sense, markets are still in a wait-and-see mood. The S&P 500 modestly gained during the week, ending it at the level of 5.667. The US Treasury yields remained relatively quiet, finishing the week at 4,25%. The price of gold reached a fresh, new all time highest level at $3.050. The crypto market was also traded in a mixed mood, with BTC ending the week above the $84K.

The most important event during the previous week was the FOMC meeting. Fed officials decided to leave interest rates unchanged, as was highly expected by market participants. Current economic sentiment, under the influence of trade tariffs are perceived as “uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased” so the risks have aroused around both sides of Fed's dual mandate. The GDP projection for this year was corrected by 0,4% to the level of 1,7%. Despite uncertainties, the Fed is still on the track of a 0,5 percentage point decrease in interest rates during this year, which would account for two rate cuts.

The Fed noted in its policy statement rising uncertainties around economic outlook caused by radical decisions of the new US Administration, while companies are starting to project their corrected earnings and growth for the future period. In this sense a company Nike noted expectations on decreased earnings originating from drop in sales due to trade tariffs. Shares of a consulting firm Accenture dropped by 7,3%, affected by the measures taken by the US DOGE amid cuts in spending.

Some good news for Ripple and its four years long battle with the SEC. As per news officially posted during the previous week, the SEC officially dropped the lawsuit against Ripple over its XRP token. As this was positive news, XRP coin jumped in value by 11%.

During the previous week Reuters published the news that the United Arab Emirates committed to the US Government to make $1,4 trillion investments into the US economy. The investments would be in the field of AI infrastructure, semiconductors industry, energy and local manufacturing. The investment is set for a period of next 10 years.

MicroStrategy finalized the sale of a series of preferred stocks, in total value of $711M. The fresh funds will be used for purchase of BTC, and is expected that the company will then hold a total 500.000 BTC tokens.


Crypto market cap

The uncertainty is currently the main word on financial markets, which influence the sentiment of investors. After turbulent last few weeks, the crypto market relatively calmed down. During the previous week, it was traded in a relatively shorter range, with almost equal number of altcoins with both positive and negative end of the week. Total crypto market capitalization remained flat during the previous week, with an modest outflow of $ 10B on a weekly basis. Daily trading volumes were further decreased to the level of around $92B on a daily basis, from $102B traded a week before. Total crypto market increase from the beginning of this year, currently stands at -16%, with $520B outflow of funds.

Regardless of short move toward the higher ground, BTC ended the week flat on a weekly basis, without a significant change in its market cap. On the opposite side was ETH, who managed to modestly increase its value by 2,3%, adding $5,5B to its capitalization. Other altcoins were traded in a mixed manner. On a positive territory was EOS, with a weekly gain of almost 9%, Tron was traded higher by 5,8% w/w and Maker was higher by 3% on a weekly basis. Uniswap gained the most with an increase of more than 12% in value. Market favorite Solana dropped in value by 4,3%, losing $ 3B in cap. ADA was down by 6%, erasing $1,6B in its value.

The highest weekly move in circulating coins had Uniswap, who not only increased its market cap by 12%, but also increased circulating coins by 4,6%. This was one of the largest increases of circulating coins for Uniswap in the recent period. IOTA also had an increase in coins on the market by 0,5% w/w, while Solana`s number of coins surged by 0,2%, same as Algorand and Filecoin.


Crypto futures market

The crypto futures market was aligned with the spot market during the previous week. BTC futures were traded lower by more than 1% on a weekly basis. BTC futures maturing in December this year ended the week at the level of $89.355, while December 2026 was last traded at $98.005.

ETH futures ended the week in a positive territory, around 2% higher from the end of the previous week. ETH futures maturing in December this year closed the week at $2.095, and those maturing a year later were last traded at $2.252.

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