These Dates Will Be Crucial
Bitcoin and crypto markets had their second straight red week, boosted 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 cryptocurrencies headed south.
But despite this brief decoupling of Bitcoin from macro action, traders should keep an eye on this week’s key dates. If the stock market rally continues, Bitcoin may want to follow suit and regain ground lost in recent weeks.
Economic data that will be important for Bitcoin and Cryptocurrencies
The state of the US job market and not one but two speeches by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will be the most important macro factors by the price of Bitcoin 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. After the recent reacceleration of the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index (PCE), market participants will be paying close attention to Powell’s choice of words, whose statements could move financial markets strongly.
Investors will be on the lookout for statements on the Fed’s monetary policy stance in its next rate decision on March 22nd. As Bitcoinist reported, the upcoming FOMC meeting could be the most important of the entire year.
On Wednesday, March 8 at 10:00 am EST, the Fed Chair will answer questions from the House Financial Services Committee and will once again be able to flesh out his statements from the previous day. But it remains to be seen whether Powell will actually comment further on the Fed’s monetary policy.
At the same time, on Wednesday, the Job Vacancy and Job Turnover Survey (JOLTS) jobs report for the month of February will be released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the data is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on cryptocurrency market prices, it’s worth a look.
For the Federal Reserve, the still strong US job 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 vacancies had been 11.01 million.
If US companies created more jobs, as they did the previous month, underpinning the strength of the US economy, that could boost financial markets. Recently, the market has tended to take a positive view of the strong US employment data.
Chinese and US Mark data in the second half of the week
On Thursday, March 9th, new inflation rates will come out of China. With the price of Bitcoin rising over 2% last Wednesday in line with Chinese equities after China’s manufacturing PMI came out extremely strong, it’s also worth looking east. If the inflation data turns out to be lower than expected and warrants looser monetary policy from the central bank of China, it could spell a boost for Bitcoin.
Of great interest will be the updated US Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) data as of Friday at 8:30 am EST for the month of February. A key question will be whether the February data confirms the January data that the US economy accelerated in early 2023 or whether it was a seasonal bias.
Analysts expect 200,000 new jobs to have been created last month, which would be a sharp drop from the 517,000 jobs created in January. If the forecast is lower, it will confirm the suspicion that the strong January number was a one-time effect.
In an optimistic scenario, the US market turns out to be stronger than estimated, which could lead to higher prices in financial markets, as this would further reduce the likelihood of a recession.
This can also be confirmed with the US unemployment rate, also released at 10:30 am EST. According to Trading Economics, the unemployment rate is expected to remain steady at 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
At press time, BTC price has remained stable at $22,417.
Featured image of Chenyu Guan / Unsplash, chart by TradingView.com