Ulrik Lykke | Oct 19, 2023 03:31PM ET
The U.S. bond market is at a tipping point, with the 10-year Treasury note yield rising above 4.95% for the first time since 2007.
This is significant and marks a point where the median returns on treasury bills (and even savings accounts) pay a higher return than real estate and the S&P500.
The US has been in better shape
In addition to this, several key indicators suggest potential challenges ahead for the U.S. economy:
All of this is happening at a time when the US is now engaged in financing not one but two major military conflicts.
The Fed is still not at the finish line.
The Fed has not yet achieved its goal of reducing inflation to the target of 2%. This is becoming a bit worrisome as the conflicts in especially the Middle East could push up oil prices, which will affect inflation numbers negatively.
The moment of excitement was very short-lived as it was quickly discovered that the reported news was not accurate.
The wild price swings up and the subsequent retraction resulted in the liquidation of over $70 million worth of short positions during the price increase. Additionally, when the price later corrected, approximately $31 million in long positions were liquidated.
Tough waters for traders to operate in!
On a positive note, it is worth noticing that BTC is still trending upward and at the time of writing maintains a 7.3% gain over the past week.
The Really Positive News
While the ETF news turned out to be a fad what was really exciting for this week was Blackrock’s CEO, Larry Fink, making remarks that the increased interest in BTC lately could be seen as a “flight to quality” driven by current geopolitical tension.
That’s pretty big.
I can’t remember a time when I have heard such positive rhetoric regarding Bitcoin from one of the world’s largest asset managers
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