Weekly Market Update: Glimmers of Hope

After last week’s bloodbath markets have rebounded on fresh hopes of Fed cuts and a new wave of global liquidity. We’re heading into a skeleton-crewed Thanksgiving and Black Friday week in the U.S. and you can already hear those sleigh bells jingling louder than ever.

In the background, the world is preparing for mega-stimulus mode: the Fed prepares to officially bury QT (quantitative tightening) on Monday, Trump has promised $2k stimulus payments before the mid-terms, Japan just unleashed a monster spending package, Canada’s dusting off the money printers, and global M2 has already blasted to an absurd $137 trillion. 

Someone tell me with a straight face that the next inflation express isn’t already hurtling down the tracks?

Trump needs a miracle boom like yesterday! His approval ratings are sliding faster than the Bitcoin price last week and the midterms are just around the corner. He’s getting increasingly desperate, promising $20 trillion will be injected into the US economy in the coming weeks resulting in an unprecedented boom for the next 3-4 months. Truth or hyperbole?

Meanwhile, inflation has been running twice the Fed’s 2% target for going-on half a decade, and stocks and houses are at nosebleed levels… yet Powell & Co are still tipped to cut rates again in December. The system needs liquidity to keep running.

Whispers out of DC are fanning glimmers of hope: a US-China trade truce could get inked this week before the turkeys come home for Thanksgiving dinner. Even the Ukraine peace talks are suddenly looking spicy with Trump twisting arms the good-old-fashioned way – another tailwind for the everything rally into year-end.

Bitcoin finally got the memo, and has bounced back off heavily oversold levels. Adding to the excitement, famed market strategist Lyn Alden says “capitulation is unlikely until we see true euphoria.” Aka: we might be done with the selling for a while.

Then, Max Keiser just lit the fuse on the next bombshell: JPMorgan is sitting on a monster short against MicroStrategy while simultaneously “warning” that MSTR’s Bitcoin-driven volatility could get it kicked out of major indices, triggering billions in forced selling at the exact worst moment. Sleight-of-hand accumulation or just getting wrecked together? You decide.

Michael Saylor, unfazed, keeps swinging his Bitcoin sword, insisting his 650k BTC fortress is unbreakable.

While Bitcoin was in chaos, some Altcoins have been showing relative strength through this recent sell-off, giving the boldest of speculators a glimmer of hope that there may still be some fuel in the tank for a long awaited Altseason 3.0. Any port in a storm?

It’s the silly season alright, and the markets are lighting up like a Christmas tree. By all accounts the Santa Rally might just come early, drunk, and swinging a flamethrower. Or fizzle out in a blaze of disappointment. 

Ho ho hold on tight, here we go. 

Market sentiment is stuck in: Extreme Fear

Crypto market moves: 

• Bitcoin absorbed more heavy long-term holder selling, driving the price down to $80,500 on Friday as $3.7 billion in leveraged long positions were liquidated in the last 7 days.
• BTC closed the week at $86.8k and nearly $40k down from the all-time highs.
• ETH dropped down over 40% in just 3 months.
• Bitcoin ETFs recorded outflows of $1.2 billion last week, with the second highest daily selling on record last Thursday! 
• The total crypto market dipped below $3 trillion, but has bounced back to $3.1 trillion but still -30% from the all-time high.
• Bitcoin weekly RSI is slowly recovering from deeply over-sold territory now at 36.
• Polymarket is strongly divided, showing 49% chance BTC will drop below $80k in 2025 and 40% chance it will break back above $100k. 
• Bitcoin dominance has paired back to 58.5% allowing some room for Alts to run after only 25 of the top 100 coins outperformed Bitcoin in the last 3 months.
• The big winner of the week is QNT (Quant) +10.4% on institutional engagement around its new QuantNet and Fusion platforms to bridge TradFi and DeFi.
• The big loser of the week is UNI (UniSwap) -17.2% as it cools off after recent hype around its potential fee switch, with regulatory concerns taking hold and slower-than-expected adoption of its V4 platform.

View all top gainers: Visit the top gainers page to find out more.

Highlights from the crypto space

Heavy risk-off sentiment in the broader tech sector last week drove Bitcoin to a short-term bottom of $80k on Friday, before mounting a relief rally on renewed hopes of a U.S. Fed rate cut and easing liquidity concerns. The key question: can a sustained upwards move gain enough momentum to recapture the crucial $100k level or has this cycle run its course?

An increase in whale activity has grown in lock step with the drop in crypto prices – market intelligence platform Santiment said it has already tracked over 100,000 whale transactions this year exceeding $100k and a further 29,000 transactions over $1 million.

JPMorgan suggested that Michael Saylor’s Strategy may no longer qualify for major stock indices as Bitcoin volatility has pushed its valuation below NAV. MSTR is down nearly 70% from its record high, holding 649,870 BTC at an average purchase price of $74,433.

Cardano had a panic moment last Friday, as the network suffered its first chain split since inception thanks to a malformed transaction, which exploited a bug in the node software, causing the network to split into two different chains.

Aave announced that it will introduce insurance-backed protection of up to $1 million per eligible user inside the Aave App, shifting deposit protection from the user to the protocol and putting DeFi on competitive footing with FinTech and traditional savings products.

A senior Bloomberg Analyst warned that Zcash may adversely impact Bitcoin at this crucial moment, saying it has “third-party candidate vibes” and risks “splitting the vote” when Bitcoin needs unified political and cultural support.

A new report from Charles Schwab shows more Americans are embracing crypto as a part of their investment strategy, with 41% now viewing crypto as a good investment and 65% of current holders planning to increase their allocations. Nice!

New Bitcoin for America legislation has been put forward that would allow Americans to settle their federal tax obligations using Bitcoin, proposing that these payments be routed directly into a national Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.

Other crypto news

• Crypto exchange Kraken confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO last week.

• Author of Rich Dad Poor Dad and long-time Bitcoin bull, Robert Kiyosaki, has disclosed selling $2.25 million of his Bitcoin holdings to invest in cash-flow assets.

• U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a surprise appearance at the opening of a Bitcoin-themed bar in Washington, DC.

• El Salvador bought a further 1,090 BTC despite an IMF loan program that pledged no new public-sector Bitcoin purchases and steps to reduce exposure.

• Grayscale XRP and Dogecoin ETFs are set to launch on the NYSE this week.

• Hobbyist solo miner scored a full Bitcoin block worth $270k despite 1-in-180 million odds.

🌎 Macro news TLDR: A new multipolar map is already drawn

The world is splintering – and fast.

America is pivoting hard to its own hemisphere: $20 billion lifeline to Argentina, terrorist designation on Venezuela’s regime, fresh talks for a beefed-up Canada deal, and Greenland quietly back on the Arctic security menu. 

The U.S. just boycotted the G20 in South Africa over “woke globalism.” Result? The summit became a Global South party with India filling the vacuum and rewriting the agenda. 

Old clubs are dying, new ones are rising: Russia may crawl back into a rebranded G8 – pure optics. Their real axis of power sits in BRICS (now with Saudi cash) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. And ASEAN just added its 11th member and is morphing into the neutral kingmaker of the century.

Trump’s 2025 trade war 100% turned decoupling from theory into daily reality. The East-West rift is now a canyon and Europe is literally in the crosshairs: Russian tanks to the east, American tariff guns to the west, Chinese rare-earth chokeholds underneath.

The massive military buildup in the Caribbean isn’t just about Maduro and Venezuela… It’s about getting Russia, China and Iran out of the western hemisphere. 

A new multipolar map is already drawn. The old world order is dead. It’s time to position for the “hemisphere pivot”.

Economic news from the Americas

The U.S. trade deficit fell by nearly 24% in August as President Trump’s sweeping global tariffs pushed imports lower in what is being described as a tailwind for Q3 GDP. But the trade deficit is still up 25% in 2025 so far, coming in at $713.6 billion.

In what is increasingly looking like a political move amid falling approval ratings, President Trump revealed that the $2,000 tariff dividends to low and middle income Americans will likely be paid sometime before the 2026 midterm elections. Democrats were not happy! 

Nvidia saved humanity again with another record earnings report mid-last week – the stock rose over 5% in a move of +$250 billion of market cap. Only to give back those gains the following day as a broader risk-off crash took hold. 

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been quietly disbanded with eight months left on its charter.

Alphabet led the broad market recovery rally to start the new week as investors grew optimistic about the company’s standing in the AI race after releasing the upgraded AI model, Gemini 3.

President Trump smirkingly suggested that he would fire Treasury Secretary Bessent if the Federal Reserve doesn’t decrease interest rates, saying “the only thing that Scott is blowing it on is the Fed. If you don’t get it fixed fast, I’m going to fire your ass.” Joking but not joking?

The producer price index (PPI), a measure of what producers get for final demand goods and services, increased by a seasonally adjusted 0.3% in September, in line with the Dow Jones consensus estimate – indicating a potential cooling in pipeline inflation pressures.

Polymarket odds have jumped to 84% chance of a 25 bps rate cut at the next mid-December FOMC meeting.

Over in Europe & the Middle East…

Ukrainian officials are willing to move forward with a U.S.-backed framework for a peace deal that would end Kyiv’s war with Russia. According to the new plan, territory will be ceded to Russia, they will be readmitted to the G8 and Ukraine will be banned from joining Nato.

President Trump has given Ukraine a week to consider the peace proposal, threatening to cut off intelligence sharing and weapons supplies if they don’t accept – saying if President Zelensky doesn’t agree to his peace plan, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.”

Business activity in the eurozone held firm in November, maintaining the solid pace of growth recorded in October, largely thanks to continued resilience in the services sector. However, there was a sharp rise in input costs for businesses, possibly driven by higher tariffs and rising electricity expenses.

Under the strain of US tariffs and Chinese export controls, the E.U. is preparing to unveil a new “economic security doctrine” in early December, which will provide bureaucrats with a dashboard of all the weapons at its disposal and the levers to pull.

And in Asia Pacific…

The first test for a much-celebrated US-China trade truce is looming, as U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent hopes to finalise a rare earth deal before the Thanksgiving holiday weekend – but experts say a breakthrough this week is unlikely as the two sides maintain sharply different narratives.

Investors are bailing out of the Yen and Japan’s government bonds, driving borrowing costs to record highs betting on what they are calling the ‘Takaichi Trade’ – i.e. that the new government’s plans to boost the economy will require a big expansion in borrowing.
Over in AU, property prices keep running hot and are tipped to surge as much as 16 per cent in Perth and by almost as much in Brisbane and Adelaide next year, driven by strong state economies and population growth.

In NZ, National has kicked off its election campaign with a party promise to pull Kiwisaver contribution rates up to Australian levels – a combined 12% contribution rate shared equally by employers and employees by 2032.

In a clear sign that the labour market is improving, job ad volumes have risen by 1% for the past four months and are now at their strongest level since late 2022.

As expected, the RBNZ made a 25 bps cut in their last decision of 2025, bringing the OCR down to 2.25%. All eyes on the meeting minutes for clues for what may lie ahead. 

That’s a wrap for this week!

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