Bitcoin is growing, the ruble is falling, May gave up

3 Apr 2019

Tuesday, compared with Monday, turned out to be much calmer in most financial markets. With the exception of the cryptocurrency market. There was a strong surge of optimism, resulting in a sharp increase in Bitcoin. For some time, the cryptocurrency was even quoted above 5,000, which was not the case since November 2018. The growth rate of Bitcoin reached 23% yesterday.

What about the reasons for growth, analysts shrug. There were no special reasons for this. It just looks like a planned attack, which, in view of the relatively low liquidity and market volume, was crowned with success. Some traders, however, suggest that such a rapid growth of cryptocurrency was associated with an April Fool's joke, according to which the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) allowed Bitcoin ETF trading.

We do not recommend encouraging about this and rushing to buy cryptocurrency, because the lack of a proper fundamental base under growth signals in favor of a quick “return”. So we consider yesterday's growth of Bitcoin as a good opportunity for more expensive sales and quick earnings.

Brexit. May gave up and acknowledged that there is no point insisting on the current version of the contract. In the end, she said she wants to develop a new approach to Brexit, together with the leader of the Labor Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Apparently, Theresa May’s new plan will be some combination of her exit agreement and a variant of the customs union, advocated by Corbyn. Recall that the alternative to this is the extension of the Brexit's terms for a long time.

Analysts of the Goldman Sachs Group meanwhile predict a quick resolution of the problems and predict a pound growth. In their opinion, buying pounds can be the most profitable trade among all possible options for trading with currencies of developed countries. Note that we recommend buying the pound for quite some time and we do not plan to change our recommendation.

The ruble continues to be under pressure. The threat of new sanctions does not allow buyers to relax, and the attractiveness of the ruble from the position of "carry-trade" has recently dropped sharply. The reason is the same - an increase in the risk component in the form of new sanctions has sharply reduced the “attractiveness” of the “carry trade” with the ruble. It is much easier in this regard to work with Indian rupee, Mexican peso or Turkish lira.

From yesterday's macroeconomic statistics, it is worth noting perhaps the weak data on goods for durable orders in the United States (down 1.6%).

About the oil markets. OPEC reduced oil production by another 295K b / d in March, and the Iranian Minister of Petroleum Industry announced that OPEC + could be extended without any problems in June. Recall, we recommend buying oil on the intraday basis.