There’s some big things going on in financial markets this Friday. World’s most favorite Crypto – Bitcoin has crashed recently, losing 30% of its value. In Europe, Catalonia elections were a success for the parties who want independence from Spain. Meanwhile, global stocks are mixed in a thin pre-holiday trade. Here’s all you need to know for today’s trading.
1. Bitcoin crashes 30%
Bitcoin was last seen below the $14,000 mark on Friday, falling more than 30% this week, its worst weekly decline since 2013, as it continued to plunge for a sixth consecutive session.
The largest digital coin by market cap - which trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week- hit a record high of $19,891.00 only last Sunday in the run up to CME’s launch of Bitcoin Futures.
Bitcoin officially entered a bear market, technically defined as a 20% plunge, on Thursday, with most market experts commenting that the alternative currency was long overdue for a correction.
At the time of this writing, even with Friday’s continued slump, Bitcoin has still rallied around 1,300% from just under $1,000 at the beginning of the year and maintains gains of nearly 40% in December.
Bitcoin, known for extreme volatility, has traded in a range of $12,110.00 to $16,775.00 on Friday on the Bitfinex exchange.
2. Euro falls amid Catalan election
The Euro was under pressure on Friday as separatists in Spain’s Catalan region looked set to form a coalition government, rattling markets as Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s plan to reign in the independent sentiment in the area led by Barcelona failed.
Even though the center-right party Ciudadanos (Citizens) won the largest portion of the votes, with 37 seats, the three separatist parties won 70 of the 135 seats in Catalonia’s parliament.
The results are a smack in the face for Rajoy who dissolved the prior Barcelona parliament two months ago after an independence referendum was determined to be illegal by Spain’s Constitutional Court.
Rajoy’s own Partido Popular (People’s Party) came away with its worst election results ever that were called with the hopes to quash the independence movement and restore a unified Spain.
3. Focus on U.S. data
In the last session before Christmas, markets will focus on data released stateside on Friday.
Top tier data including durable goods, personal income & spending and core PCE price index for November will all be published at 13:30 GMT.
At 15:00 GMT, investors will digest the revision to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment for December along with November new home sales.
While waiting for the data, the U.S. dollar index rose 0.11% at 92.94 by 10:28 GMT.
4. Global stocks mixed
Trading was expected be thin on Friday as many market participants had already closed their books for the Christmas holidays.
According to Reuters, volume on U.S. exchanges was 6.08 billion shares on Thursday, compared to the 6.88 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
European equities were mostly lower on Thursday as investors digested the results from the Catalan elections with Spain’s benchmark Ibex 35 leading the declines with losses of around 1%.
Wall Street was unaffected by the goings on in Europe with U.S. futures pointing to a slightly higher open ahead of the deluge of data.
