Bitcoin and crypto markets had their second straight week of red, buoyed by negative news about US crypto bank Silvergate. While the dollar index (DXY) weakened on Friday and the world’s largest stock index, the S&P 500, showed a strong recovery, bitcoin and crypto went south.
But despite Bitcoin’s brief decoupling from macro action, investors should keep an eye on key dates this week. If the stock market rally continues, Bitcoin could follow suit, looking to regain some ground lost over the past few weeks.
Economic data that will be important for Bitcoin and crypto
The state of the US job market and two speeches by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will be the most important macro factors for the Bitcoin price this week.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 7 at 10:00 am EST, Powell will address the Senate Banking Committee on the economic outlook in the United States. Following the recent re-acceleration in the Index of Consumer Prices (CPI) and the Index of Personal Consumption Expenditure (PCE), market participants will pay close attention to Powell’s words, which could potentially have a major impact on financial markets.
Investors will look to the Fed’s monetary policy stance for its next rate decision on March 22nd. As Bitcoinist reported, the next FOMC meeting could be the most important of the year.
On Wednesday, March 8 at 10:00 am EST, the Fed Chair will answer questions from the House Financial Services Committee and may clarify his statements from the previous day. It remains to be seen whether Powell will actually make any new comments on the Fed’s monetary policy.
At the same time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) job report for the month of February will be released Wednesday. While the data is unlikely to have a major impact on crypto market prices, it’s worth a look.
For the Federal Reserve, the continued strength of the US labor market is one of the most important factors to monitor. The estimate is 10.60 million vacancies. In the previous calculation period, the number of job offers was 11.01 million.
If US companies added more jobs like last month, underlining the strength of the US economy, this could give a boost to financial markets. Of late, the market has tended to take a positive view of the strong payrolls data in the United States.
Chinese and US Marco Data in the second half of the week
On Thursday, March 9th, fresh inflation figures come out of China. With bitcoin price up more than 2% last Wednesday in line with Chinese stocks after China’s manufacturing PMI was extremely strong, it’s also worth looking east. If inflation data comes out lower than expected and warrants looser monetary policy from the People’s Bank of China, it could spell a bullish momentum for Bitcoin.
Of particular interest will be the February US jobs data, updated Friday at 8:30 am EST. A key question will be whether the February data will confirm January’s data that the US economy accelerated in early 2023, or whether it is a seasonal bias.
Forecasts say 200,000 new jobs were added last month, a significant drop from the 517,000 jobs added in January. If the forecast is not reached, the suspicion that the strong January figure was a one-time effect is confirmed.
In a bullish scenario, the US market turns out to be stronger than the estimate, which could lead to bullish prices in the financial markets as it would further reduce the likelihood of a recession.
This could also be confirmed by the US Unemployment Rate, also due to be released at 10:30 am EST. According to Trading Economics, the unemployment rate is expected to remain stable at 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
At press time, BTC price remained unchanged at $22,417.
BTC price moves sideways after sudden drop | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
Featured image by Chenyu Guan/Unsplash, chart from TradingView.com
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