Sellers of risk assets are taking a breather on Friday, with crypto markets posting sizable gains along with U.S. stocks after a week of lame price action.
Bitcoin topped $85,000 at one point during U.S. hours and is now trading at $84,400, up 4.7% over the past 24 hours. All cryptos in the CoinDesk 20 Index were higher during the same period, with Chainlink’s LINK, Solana’s SOL and SUI leading gains.
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The price action happened as risk appetite returned to traditional markets as well. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq indexes were 1.7% and 2.3 up, respectively. Meanwhile, gold, whose price action trounced that of bitcoin during the selling of the past few weeks, backed down below $3,000 after crossing the level yesterday for the first time in its history.
Today’s bounce also propelled BTC back above its 200-day moving average after dipping below that trendline for the first time since last August’s crypto correction. The 200-day moving average is a widely-used benchmark for traders and investors to gauge long-term trends for asset prices, often serving as support for prices to bounce in a bull market, while losing the level providing a risk-off or bear market signal.
Closing the day above the moving average, currently at $83,767, would be a win for bulls, fueling hopes that the worst of the correction might be over for now. Otherwise, confirming the moving average as resistance could foreshadow a deeper pullback.
Well-followed cross-asset trader Bob Loukas noted that bitcoin and stocks have more room to run “at least for a while,” bouncing from oversold levels. “Feels like should be close to end of panic, for now at least, and spend at least a few weeks back recovering,” he said earlier this week. “Then the market reassess.”
