Tag Archives: Cryptocurrency Markets

Business

Tom DeMark identified the bitcoin downside in March. Here’s the good and bad news the technical strategist now has for the cryptocurrency.

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Technical strategist Tom DeMark in March said bitcoin could fall as low as $18,418 — back when the cryptocurrency was trading as high as $48,000.

A volatile weekend had bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-1.21%
briefly trading below $18,000, as it traded around $20,000 on Monday, down some 70% from its Nov. 10 peak of $68,924. Bitcoin has collapsed in value as the Federal Reserve began lifting interest rates.

DeMark’s indicators place great importance on the number of days, which don’t have to be consecutive, in which there was a close lower than the close two days ago. Subject to various conditions, when the countdown reaches 13, a buy signal is triggered. (The opposite applies to sell signals.) Put more simply, his analysis looks for both overbought and oversold signals.

Tom DeMark says his indicators have spotted bitcoin tops and bottoms.

In an analysis provided exclusively to MarketWatch, DeMark says lasting damage has been done because bitcoin has fallen more than 50% from its peak. In prior declines, bitcoin held the 50% retracement levels.

See earlier story: The technician who called the 2020 market bottom says a ‘shocking rally’ is in store

“Typically, structural long term damage is done to an uptrend when a retracement exceeds 56%,” says DeMark, the founder and CEO of DeMark Analytics and a consultant to hedge-fund manager Steven A. Cohen. “Such breakdowns bespeak a high probability recovery to the all-time bitcoin highs will require many years, if not decades, to accomplish.”

As a comparison, it took 25 years for stocks to exceed the prior September 1929 high.

But like the stock market after 1929, there could be a rally. “This does not negate the prospect of up to 50-56% recovery over upcoming months which implies bitcoin rally back to $40,000-$45,000.”

Some good news may be in store for bitcoin investors.

Depending on which timing model is applied, bitcoin recorded buy countdown 12 or 13 on Saturday morning. “Since this was accomplished over a weekend and a 7 day chart there remains modest risk of two lower lows and closes than Saturday levels next week. Regardless once there is a close above the close 4 days prior followed the next trading day with a higher high and close, the trend should reverse upside,” he says.

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Business

Bitcoin’s Price Falls Below $20,000

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The price of bitcoin lurched below $20,000, and below a level widely monitored by cryptocurrency enthusiasts, as a brutal selloff in crypto showed no signs of abating.

Bitcoin fell as low as $18,739.50 and stayed below $20,000 on Saturday, according to CoinDesk, losing 72% of its value from its high in November. Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s actions to tame higher-than-expected inflation have pushed both stocks and cryptocurrencies into a bear market. Big names in the industry, including

Coinbase Global Inc.,

the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., have recently announced job cuts.

There is no specific significance to the $20,000 level, but the price slid below $19,783, a previous high water mark hit in 2017, according to Coinbase. Bitcoin bulls have long held that the cryptocurrency had in recent years entered a new stage of development and acceptance, and that it wouldn’t fall below that 2017 level.

“It will be a lot of pain for a lot of investors,” said Yuya Hasegawa, a market analyst at Japanese crypto exchange Bitbank Inc. People will lose confidence in the crypto market as a whole, but seasoned crypto investors and those who believe in its long-term prospects will see an opportunity to buy at discounted prices, he said.

Ether, another major cryptocurrency, fell below $1,000, briefly reaching $975.35 on Saturday, according to CoinDesk, its lowest level since January 2021.

Bitcoin’s slide from its record high of $67,802 in November has contributed to a roughly $2 trillion wipeout in the broader market. Crypto’s total market capitalization, which peaked in November at nearly $3 trillion, stood at around $840 billion Saturday—its lowest since January 2021, according to data provider CoinMarketCap.

Bitcoin traded around the $30,000 mark for most of May before dropping sharply again in June after a fresh inflation shock and worries about rising U.S. interest rates. Investors have been unloading assets seen as risky, such as cryptocurrencies and technology stocks.

Individual investors have received margin calls, with about $260 million of collateral pledged by about 80,000 retail traders liquidated over the past 24 hours, according to data provider CoinGlass. That compares with $1 billion earlier this week.

A growing number of previously highflying crypto firms have been feeling the pain in what has been dubbed a “crypto winter.” Cryptocurrency lender Babel Finance told customers Friday that it was suspending redemptions and withdrawals from all products, citing “unusual liquidity pressures.” One of the largest crypto lenders, Celsius Network LLC, hasn’t let users withdraw funds for roughly a week, citing extreme market conditions.

Cryptocurrency-focused hedge fund Three Arrows Capital Ltd. has hired legal and financial advisers to help work out a solution for its investors and lenders after suffering heavy losses from a broad market selloff in digital assets, the firm’s founders told The Wall Street Journal.

The surge in cryptocurrency valuations over the last two years was aided by big-name investments from companies such as

Tesla Inc.

and a period of lower interest rates during the pandemic that encouraged individuals stuck at home to buy riskier assets in the hopes of greater returns.

Interest-rate increases now being enacted by the Fed come at a time when blowups in some crypto projects have rippled across the ecosystem. So-called stablecoin TerraUSD broke from its $1 peg last month following intense selling pressure, leaving it and its original sister cryptocurrency Luna now nearly worthless. As its developers sought to defend TerraUSD’s peg, they sold bitcoin reserves, weighing on the price of it and other assets.

Crypto investors more recently have become concerned about a derivative of the cryptocurrency ether that is locked up until the Ethereum network transitions to a less energy-intensive model. So-called Lido-staked ether has been trading at a discount to ether itself recently.

“Crypto has enough problems. It doesn’t need the macro,” said Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at crypto lender Genesis Global Trading, in reference to rising interest rates and inflation concerns.

Write to Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com and Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Bitcoin Price Dips Below $21,000 as Crypto Firms Announce Layoffs

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The price of bitcoin continued to fall Tuesday as the crypto industry struggles with fallout from the extended selloff.

Bitcoin traded as low as $20,834 earlier on Tuesday, according to CoinDesk. The original cryptocurrency hasn’t traded under $20,000 since December 2020.

For the day, bitcoin fell 5.4% to $21,991.89, its lowest close since Dec. 16, 2020, according to Dow Jones Market Data. It is down about 68% from its all-time high in November last year at $67,802.

Coinbase Global Inc.,

one of the largest and most valuable crypto exchanges, said Tuesday that it was laying off 18% of its staff, a move that comes roughly a month after the company imposed a hiring freeze. Two other prominent crypto companies, Crypto.com and BlockFi, have also announced layoffs.

Coinbase shares closed down 0.8% at $51.58. The stock has fallen about 80% year to date.

WSJ’s Dion Rabouin explains why Wall Street is now betting big on crypto and what that means for the new asset class and its future. Photo composite: Elizabeth Smelov

Cryptocurrencies have been sinking along with other higher-risk assets as the Federal Reserve steadily reverses the aggressive monetary policies it adopted earlier in the coronavirus pandemic. Lately, its efforts to raise interest rates to combat surging inflation have further dented investors’ risk appetite.

The market value of the entire crypto sector has fallen to less than $1 trillion from about $3 trillion in November, according to CoinMarketCap. Those falls reflect a significant drop in trading activity and momentum, and until that turns around, industry players like Coinbase are likely to remain under pressure, said KBW Managing Director

Kyle Voigt.

Coinbase Chief Executive

Brian Armstrong

said the company had grown too quickly, expanding from about 1,250 employees at the start of last year to around 5,000 currently.

“We saw the opportunities but we needed to massively scale our team to be positioned to compete in a broad array of bets,” he wrote in a note to staff. “While we tried our best to get this just right, in this case it is now clear to me that we over-hired.”

The price of ether, the in-house currency of the Ethereum network, fell 4.5% to $1,187.30, its lowest close since Jan. 21, 2021. Over the weekend, the price fell below $1,360, the early 2019 high from the previous cycle.

Other cryptocurrencies were mixed. Cardano fell 1.9%, but Solana was up 1.3% and Stellar was up 0.5%.

Write to Paul Vigna at paul.vigna@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

U.S. stock futures sink after Wall Street’s worst week since January

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U.S. stock-index futures sank Sunday after Wall Street’s worst week since January.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures
YM00,
-1.25%
fell about 300 points, or 1%, as of midnight Eastern, while S&P 500 futures
ES00,
-1.65%
and Nasdaq-100 futures
NQ00,
-2.17%
posted even steeper declines.

Prices of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies also slid over the weekend, with bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-7.71%
falling below the $26,000 level to its lowest point in 18 months, and more than 60% off its all-time high reached last November. Crude prices
CL.1,
-1.31%
dipped Sunday as well.

Also: Crypto lending platform Celsius pauses withdrawals, transfers amid ‘extreme market conditions’

Stocks finished sharply lower Friday. The Dow
DJIA,
-2.73%
dropped 880 points, or 2.7%, to close at 31,392.79; the S&P 500
SPX,
-2.91%
 slid 116.96 points, or 2.9%, to finish at 3,900.86; and the Nasdaq Composite
COMP,
-3.52%
 slumped 414.20 points, or 3.5%, to end at 11,340.02.

For the week, the Dow fell 4.6%, the S&P 500 dove 5.1% and the Nasdaq sank 5.6%. It was the biggest weekly loss since January for all three major benchmarks, according to Dow Jones Market Data.

Read: Stocks sink again as hot inflation reading triggers market shock waves: What investors need to know

Markets fell following renewed inflation worries, as a new report showed hotter-than-expected readings. The consumer-price index on Friday showed U.S. inflation increased 1% in May, well above the 0.7% monthly rise forecast by economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. The year-over-year rate rose 8.6%, topping the 40-year high of 8.5% seen in March.

Federal Reserve policy-makers are set to meet this week, and are expected to raise interest rates by 50 basis points, though some economists think that after Friday’s CPI report, there may be support for a more aggressive 75-basis-point hike.

Also see: ‘Doves don’t exist on the FOMC right now’: Economists expect hawkish Fed meeting this week

“U.S. CPI for May was a nightmare for risk markets,” Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management, wrote in a note Sunday. “The market is now thinking much more about the Fed driving rates sharply higher to get on top of inflation and then having to cut back as growth drops.

That will leave traders and investors “deliberating how much further tightening central banks’ will be able to deliver and, therefore, how much higher yields can go from here. And we all know nothing ever good happens when interest rate volatility spikes in capital markets,” he said.

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Business

Crypto lending platform Celsius pauses withdrawals amid ‘extreme market conditions’

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Crypto lending platform Celsius Networks LLC said Sunday it is pausing all withdrawals, swaps and transfers between accounts, “due to extreme market conditions.”

“We are taking this action today to put Celsius in a better position to honor, over time, its withdrawal obligations,” the New Jersey-based company said in a statement.

Celsius is one of the largest crypto lending companies in the world, at one point claiming more than $20 billion in assets. But it has also run afoul of regulators, and some users have recently blamed Celsius for steep financial losses for encouraging them to hold its CEL digital tokens as collateral for loans — CEL plunged 48% late Sunday and has lost more than 75% of its value over the past month, and 97% over the past year, according to CoinGecko data.

From May: Celsius faces a revolt as a high-yield crypto plummets

The wider cryptocurrency space has been slammed this year, with the total crypto market down more than 40% over the past two months. Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-5.39%,
for example, slid to an 18-month low Sunday and has lost 45% of its value year to date; it’s off more than 60% since its all-time high-water mark last November.

“We understand that this news is difficult,” Celsius said Sunday. “We are working with a singular focus: to protect and preserve assets to meet our obligations to customers.”

Celsius said its operations were continuing, but that there was “a lot of work ahead  as we consider various options.”

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Business

Stablecoin TerraUSD Continues Downward Spiral; Bitcoin Gains

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The largest cryptocurrencies showed signs of recovery following a roughly weeklong selloff, while beleaguered stablecoin TerraUSD continued to tumble.

Bitcoin was up about 4.3% Friday from its 5 p.m. ET level Thursday, trading around $29,800.33, after falling below $26,000 Thursday. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency by market value, rose 6.2%.

TerraUSD fell to 10 cents early Friday, having declined 82% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinDesk. It edged up to about 14 cents late afternoon. The formerly third-largest stablecoin—a type of cryptocurrency known for its stability—has come off its $1 peg following a wave of selling that started at the weekend. Its decline has taken its sister token, Luna, down with it and has weighed on bitcoin. Luna fell to less than a half-cent Friday, down from more than $60 Monday.

The blockchain underlying TerraUSD and Luna had been twice halted as its network validators seek to stabilize the digital assets. Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by volume, suspended trading of both TerraUSD and Luna late Thursday.

On Friday, both the blockchain and Binance’s trading of TerraUSD and Luna resumed, according to the companies.

Stablecoins have surged in popularity the past two years and now act as the grease that moves the gears of the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Traders prefer to buy coins such as bitcoin, ether and dogecoin using digital assets that are pegged to the dollar because when they buy or sell, the price is only moving on one side. They also allow for fast trading without the settlement times associated with government-issued currencies, which can take days.

While the most popular stablecoins maintain their levels with assets that include dollar-denominated debt and cash, TerraUSD is an algorithmic stablecoin, which relies on financial engineering to maintain its link to the dollar.

In the past, TerraUSD maintained its $1 price by relying on traders who acted as its backstop. When it fell below the peg, traders would burn the stablecoin—removing it from circulation—by exchanging TerraUSD for $1 worth of new units of Luna. That action reduced the supply of TerraUSD and raised its price.

Conversely, when TerraUSD’s value rose above $1, traders could burn Luna and create new TerraUSD, thus increasing the supply of the stablecoin and lowering its price back toward $1.

That financial engineering to maintain its peg began to falter over the weekend with a series of large withdrawals of TerraUSD from Anchor Protocol, a sort of decentralized bank for crypto investors.

Meanwhile, TerraUSD was sold for stablecoins backed by traditional assets through various liquidity pools that contribute to the stability of the peg, as well as through cryptocurrency exchanges. The sudden outflow spooked some traders who began selling TerraUSD and Luna.

The prices of many cryptocurrencies have fallen sharply over the past week.



Photo:

Erhan Demirtas/Bloomberg News

A reserve fund of about $3 billion in bitcoin and other cryptocurrency resources, owned by the Luna Foundation Guard, has been largely depleted amid an emergency effort to salvage TerraUSD, according to the fund’s data dashboard. The fund’s selling contributed to a sharp drop in bitcoin’s price earlier this week, analysts and traders said.

Write to Caitlin Ostroff at caitlin.ostroff@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the May 14, 2022, print edition as ‘TerraUSD Left Out As Crypto Stabilizes.’



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Business

Bitcoin Price Falls 54% From Its High

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The cryptocurrency market has continued its slide from last week, mirroring the fall of the broader stock market.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, fell to $31,075.70 on Monday evening, a 10% drop from Sunday at 5 p.m. EDT, according to prices from CoinDesk. Bitcoin’s price has fallen 54% from its record high of $67,802 in November.

It is on track for the worst five-day stretch since the five days ended March 16, 2020, when it fell almost 38%.

Ethereum, the second-largest cryptocurrency, fell Monday to $2,286.10, almost 10% below the price Sunday evening.

Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies more widely are known for their violent price swings. Individual investors controlled the market for years but institutional investors, such as hedge funds and money managers, have started to dominate it.

With more professional investors trading crypto, the market has increasingly moved in tandem with traditional markets. Many institutional investors that buy cryptocurrencies treat them as risk assets, similar to technology stocks. Investors tend to retreat to safer corners of the market during turbulent bouts.

The stock market dropped last week the day after the Federal Reserve announced a rate increase of a half point, the biggest since 2000, to battle inflation. Fed Chairman

Jerome Powell

said there could be additional increases during the summer. The central bank is also unwinding some of its $9 trillion asset portfolio.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite hit a new 52-week low on Monday, falling 26% year to date.

Crypto prices have been stagnant for much of 2022 as investors brace for rising interest rates. The crypto market has been active over the past 24 hours, with almost $155 billion in market volume in that period, according to CoinMarketCap. The global crypto market fell to $1.4 trillion.

Cryptocurrency companies have been working to become household names. Flush with venture-capital investment, crypto platforms have been spending more cash on lobbying efforts and marketing directly to consumers.

The U.S. quickly became the world leader in bitcoin mining after China cracked down on crypto last year. WSJ’s Shelby Holliday takes a look at what the global shift has meant for the bitcoin network, the energy industry and the environment. Photo: Mark Felix/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Appeared in the May 10, 2022, print edition as ‘Bitcoin Price Plummets 55% From Its High.’

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Business

Crypto Prices Slump Over the Weekend

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The decline of bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, mirrored the slide of the overall stock market.



Photo:

Kin Cheung/Associated Press

The cryptocurrency market fell over the weekend, mirroring the slide of the broader stock market.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency, bitcoin, fell to $34,702.69 on Sunday morning, a 3.8% change from Friday evening, according to prices from CoinDesk. Bitcoin’s price is almost half its all-time high of $67,802.30 in November.

As more professional investors have entered the cryptocurrency market, it’s increasingly moved in tandem with traditional markets. Institutional investors that buy cryptocurrencies treat them as risk assets, similar to tech stocks.

The stock market fell last week the day after the Federal Reserve announced a rate increase of a half point, the biggest since 2000, to battle inflation. The central bank is also unwinding some of its $9 trillion asset portfolio. Fed Chairman

Jerome Powell

said there could be additional increases over the summer.

Investors have been less enthusiastic about risky bets amid the stock market’s decline. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite hit a 52-week low on Friday, falling to 12144.66. Year to date it is down 22%.

The crypto market was active over the weekend with $100 billion in market volume, according to CoinMarketCap. The global crypto market is now only $1.6 trillion.

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

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Business

Elon Musk Gets $7 Billion in Fresh Financing for Twitter Deal

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Tesla Inc.’s chief executive has received letters committing about $7.14 billion from a group of 19 investors. The biggest contribution comes from

Prince al-Waleed bin Talal

of Saudi Arabia, who agreed to retain his nearly $1.9 billion stake in Twitter following Mr. Musk’s takeover, the disclosure said.

The new money will cut in half the amount Mr. Musk needs to borrow against his Tesla stake, and will slightly reduce the balance of cash he needs to put up personally, to just under $20 billion.

Oracle Corp. co-founder Larry Ellison, who sits on Tesla’s board, agreed to put in $1 billion. Cryptocurrency exchange Binance.com, controlled by billionaire developer

Changpeng Zhao,

promised $500 million. Other contributors include $850 million from venture capital stalwarts Sequoia Capital. Arms of asset managers Fidelity Investments and

Brookfield Asset Management Inc.

BAM 2.69%

will also take part.

Twitter will become a private company if Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover bid is approved. The move would allow Musk to make changes to the site. WSJ’s Dan Gallagher explains Musk’s proposed changes and the challenges he might face enacting them. Illustration: Jordan Kranse

Binance said its involvement is “as a supporter of Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter and an investor,” a spokesman said. Mr. Zhao tweeted that the investment was “a small contribution to the cause.”

Mr. Musk said he is in talks to bring more current Twitter shareholders, including co-founder

Jack Dorsey,

into the company after the buyout. Mr. Musk has told potential investors in Twitter that he could return the company to public markets after a few years of ownership, The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week.

By assembling a roster of big money backers, Mr. Musk will effectively reduce the amount of risk he has to personally take to close the $44 billion deal. The world’s richest man, by some measures, Mr. Musk leveraged a wide network of associates to come on board for his plans.

He has said that he wants the social-media company to be less censorious in content moderation, but has otherwise given few details about his exact plans. At one point he said he doesn’t care whether he makes money on the deal. Mr. Musk has a history of missing his timelines and targets at Tesla, the electric-car company.

Twitter shares jumped 2% in premarket trading to around $49, edging toward Mr. Musk’s $54.20 a share offer price. The closer the stock gets to the offer price, the higher likelihood that investors put on the deal going through.

As a result of the new financing commitments, Mr. Musk said the $12.5 billion margin loan he had received to buy Twitter has been reduced to $6.25 billion and the takeover will be financed now by $27.25 billion in equity and cash.

Mr. Musk’s heavy borrowing against his shares has weighed on Tesla’s stock in recent weeks. The shares were flat in premarket trading.

Other prominent backers of the deal include Dubai-based investment firm VyCapital, which is on the hook for $700 million, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has thrown in $400 million.

Qatar Holding LLC, founded in 2006 by the Qatar Investment Authority, has also pitched in $375 million and Aliya Capital Partners LLC, run by Chief Executive Ari Shrage, has committed $360 million.

Other new financiers of the deal include familiar faces in Mr. Musk’s past. Bamco Inc., founded by prominent Tesla investor Ron Baron, has committed $100 million. Draper Fisher Jurvetson, SpaceX board member Steve Jurvetson’s former venture capital firm, has committed another $100 million.

Capital LLC and Witkoff Capital are also backers.

Tech-focused financial adviser Key Wealth Advisors LLC, private-equity firm A.M. Management & Consulting and Chicago-based Litani Ventures, which is the family office of RXBAR founder Peter Rahal, are also coming in on the deal.

Other companies listed are Peter Avellone-founded Cartenna Capital LP, which committed $8.5 million, and David Fiszel-founded Honeycomb Asset Management LP, which threw in $5 million.

—Caitlin Ostroff and Patricia Kowsmann contributed to this article.

Write to Will Feuer at will.feuer@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8



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Business

‘So bad, it’s good.’ This beleaguered stock market has one big asset on its side, say strategists.

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A rough month for stocks is drawing to a close, and many investors likely won’t be sad to see the back of it. And the last day of April trade is looking weak as Apple and Amazon failed to raise the bar on a mixed season for tech earnings.

Our call of the day comes from Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist Advisory Services, who said “depressed” investor sentiment is the reason he hasn’t shifted to a full negative stance on stocks right now.

“Indeed with markets, it’s not about good or bad — it’s all about better or worse relative to expectations. When expectations are low, a little bit of good news can go a long way. That’s why markets tend to bottom when fear and uncertainty are at an extreme,” said Lerner in a recent note to clients.

He downgraded his equity stance to neutral in April after two years of a positive stance, noting that while the range of potential outcomes is wide, risk/reward is less positive.

He pointed to the latest survey from the American Association of Individual Investors (AAII), which showed the percentage of investors with a negative/bearish outlook surging to 59.4%. That was the highest since early March 2009, just a few weeks short of a major stock bottom following the 2008-09 financial crisis decline.

“To be fair, investors were correctly negative in January 2008 in the early stages of that market downturn,” he said.

The percentage of bullish investors is currently 16%, also close to a record low, leaving the bull/bear spread at -43%, a level that has been surpassed twice in the past 35 years — in the fall of 1990 and that March 2009 period, said Lerner.


Truist Advisory Services

A similar theme was heard from Thomas Lee, founder of Fundstrat Global Advisors, who told clients that the AAII sentiment survey was a “major bottom signal,” based on history. “So bad, it’s good,” he said.

Lee provided this chart showing when such a weak reading marked a stock bottom:

One footnote from Lee is that the AAII survey tends to sample older investors, and not the Reddit crowd.

Read: Boomers are leaving the stock market. Here’s what happens next.

Lerner adds other proof of investor negativity, such as the $45 billion flowing out of equity funds over the past two weeks. “This is an extreme that we have also seen during times of heightened uncertainty and volatility,” Lerner said.

For example: the post-Lehman Brothers bankruptcy, the U.S. debt downgrade, COVID-19 pandemic lows and two months before the 2020 U.S. presidential election. While the Lehman Brothers signal was “premature,” strong price returns followed the other periods, he said.

In short, Lerner said Truist follows the “weight-of-the-evidence approach,” which is telling it that depressed investor views and a “low hurdle for positive surprises” are the stock market’s biggest assets going.

The buzz

The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge — the core personal consumer expenditure price index — rose a sharp 0.9%i, and employment costs also rose. The followed by the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index is still to come, and next week we’ll get a Fed meeting.

Amazon
AMZN,
-11.95%
is down 8% after its first loss in seven years. Apple
AAPL,
+1.34%
is down over 2% after the tech giant topped earnings and set a revenue record, but warned of billions in added costs from supply-chain woes.

Tesla
TSLA,
+6.32%
stock is higher after CEO Elon Musk tweeted that there were no more sales planned for now, after he sold nearly $4 billion worth.

Earnings from Chevron
CVX,
-0.94%,
Exxon
XOM,
+0.23%
have left those shares softer, while Honeywell
HON,
+4.98%
is up on results, while AbbVie
ABBV,
-10.36%,
Bristol-Myers Squibb
BMY,
-2.30%
and Colgate-Palmolive
CL,
-5.43%
are also all down on results.

Opinion: Big Tech is no longer winning as big, but these two stocks still seem safe

Elsewhere, Intel
INTC,
-5.25%
is down after results, while investors are cheering Roku
ROKU,
+9.57%
earnings. Also sinking are shares of Robinhood
HOOD,
+4.66%,
which missed forecasts and said fewer people were trading on its app.

And Digital World Acquisition Corp.
DWAC,
+8.07%,
the special-purpose acquisition company buying the company behind former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social, is surging after Trump resurfaced with a message on the platform.

Ukraine’s leader has accused Russia of trying to humiliate the UN by firing missles on Kyiv during a visit by Secretary-General António Guterres. And efforts to get trapped civilians out of embattled Mariupol continue.

China’s government has vowed more support for its economy, as the country battles COVID-19 outbreaks.

The Labor Department is worried Fidelity’s plan to allow Bitcoin into 401(k) plans is risky for retirees.

The markets

Stocks
DJIA,
-0.05%

SPX,
-0.47%

COMP,
-0.12%
are lower, with bond yields
TMUBMUSD10Y,
2.865%

TMUBMUSD02Y,
2.702%
higher and crude-oil prices
CL00,
+0.94%
up. Gold is climbing , while the dollar
DXY,
-0.37%
has cooled after Thursday’s massive rally, notably against the yen
USDJPY,
-0.57%,
which continues to drop. The Russian central bank cut interest rates to 14% and the ruble
USDRUB,
-2.12%
is rebounding.

Bitcoin
BTCUSD,
-1.67%
and other cryptos are modestly off.

The chart

Naomi Poole and a team of strategists at Morgan Stanley have rolled out a new Market Sentiment Indicator (MSI) to offer “tactical guidance on ‘risky assets.’” It aggregates survey, positioning, volatility and momentum data to gauge market stress and sentiment.

The MSCI All-Country World Index (you can track that via the exchange-traded fund iShares MSCI ACWI
ACWI,
+0.25%
) is used as a proxy for risk asset performance.

“Our analysis suggests that improving/deteriorating sentiment is a more powerful signal for forward returns than just extreme levels,” said Poole and the team. Using the level and direction of stress, the MSI is currently neutral and not giving off buy signals yet, they said.

The tickers

These were the top-traded tickers on MarketWatch as of 6 a.m. Eastern Time:

TSLA,
+6.32% 		Tesla
AAPL,
+1.34% 		Apple
AMZN,
-11.95% 		Amazon
GME,
+0.76% 		GameStop
AMC,
+2.49% 		AMC Entertainment
NIO,
+7.12% 		NIO
FB,
+2.85% 		Meta Platforms
BABA,
+11.86% 		Alibaba
NVDA,
+1.61% 		Nvidia
TWTR,
+0.72% 		Twitter
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A southern Italian town may hold the secrets to longevity. And it’s all down to food.

Pet duck helps solve a murder mystery.

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