Weekly Market Update: The Show Goes On

Winners don’t chase the herd

Markets teetered on the brink, consumer confidence plunged amid a protracted government shutdown, AI bubble fears ran rampant and crypto whales started dumping like it’s 2022 all over again. Extreme fear had gripped the markets.

The weekly close was a ‘heart-stopper’, with crash alarms sounding! Even Michael Burry placed a $1 billion bet on a fresh ‘Big AI Short.’

Then Trump, the master showman, pulled multiple rabbits from his hat over the weekend: 50-year mortgages, $2K stimulus checks and a bipartisan deal poised to end the U.S. government shutdown – liquidity lifelines for gasping consumers and banks.

Markets whipsawed on raw hopium; the shutdown end is in sight. Tech giants roared back to life. Bitcoin clinched a weekly close above its ‘bull market support’ at the 50-week MA. And the show goes on!

Trump once again declared: “I wanna make crypto great for America,” just ahead of the draft Crypto Market Structure Bill released by the Senate Committee – a huge move towards a clear legal framework for Bitcoin and crypto trading in the U.S.

Don’t pop the champagne yet – nothing here is real relief. That flashy $2,000 tariff-rebate “stimulus” is just handing Americans back their own tariff-paid money so they can now buy the same imported goods at even higher prices.

The new 50-year mortgages are a banker’s dream: on a $500k loan they shave off a pathetic 11% from weekly payments while jacking up total interest paid by a brutal 81% (not factoring in a higher interest rate for a longer term of loan).

And the “government funding bill” is nothing more than a short-term funding measure that runs out on January 30, 2026. It’s all smoke, mirrors and future pain dressed up as victory.

The black swans are still circling: the Russia/Ukraine conflict drags on, Venezuela’s missile crisis intensifies, U.S. banks show stress cracks, Trump’s tariff promises may boomerang. But for now, markets continue to shrug it off, eyeing a Santa Rally into the silly season.

Michael Saylor, the perpetual bull, stacks more Bitcoin leverage and proclaims “Buy the Dip.” But tread carefully taking advice from a guy whose entire wealth is predicated on ‘up only.’ 

Reality check: even Saylor and Burry don’t always get it right! Dr. Burry has successfully predicted 18 out of the last 2 recessions! The market can often turn on a dime, but it can also stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

On the one hand, it feels like this cycle can’t be over already and there must be more room to run. But on the other hand, we may have already had a normal cycle – Bitcoin is 7.5x from its Nov 2022 lows, Ethereum hit a new all-time high, Solana had a 35x run, Memecoin mania minted multiple 100x baggers, and the AI crypto coins created new millionaires. DYOR!

If the bulls come charging back and the FOMO starts screaming like a rocket launch, don’t torch your plan on the altar of greed. Stick to your playbook and let the manic crowd run straight past you into the next wall. Winners don’t chase the herd – they hunt it.

Market sentiment is still in: Extreme Fear

Crypto market moves: 

• Bitcoin dipped below $100k multiple times last week, but always recovered intraday, notching 6 months of daily closes above the $100k level.
• The crucial 50 week moving average aka “bull market support” was tested, but BTC closed the week at $104.7k on the bullish news out of the U.S.
• From a TA perspective, the bull market uptrend looks to be intact and the Bitcoin weekly RSI remained above the typical bear market confirmation level of 45.
• Bitcoin ETFs saw a net outflow last week totalling $1.2 billion.
• Bitcoin balance on exchanges has just hit an all time low!
• But Polymarket is still showing just 10% chance that BTC will hit $120k in Nov.
• Total crypto loans jumped +35% in Q3, tripling since Q1 2024, as increased leverage proliferates volatility.
• BTC dominance is holding just above 60%.
• The total crypto market cap is creeping back up, now at $3.55 trillion with 26 of the top 100 Altcoins outperforming Bitcoin in the past 90 days.  
• The Fear & Greed index is back in “Extreme Fear” as retail investors are keeping a wide berth with Google search volumes still bouncing along the bottom.
• The big winner of the week is UNI (UniSwap) +64.4% due to a new, significant governance proposal called “UNIfication” that aims to activate protocol fees and redirect them to token burns and community initiatives.
• The surprise mover of the week is NEAR (Near Protocol) +39.2% as AI hype returned.
• The big loser of the week is ENA (Ethena) -3.4% due to token unlocks.

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

Highlights from the crypto space:

The Bitcoin bull market was hanging in the balance as the tech sector sell-off intensified last week, until President Trump came to the rescue over the weekend announcing new 50-year mortgages, $2k stimulus payments and a likely end to the U.S. government shutdown. The bulls may have wrested back control, for now!

We are likely in the distribution stage of this cycle with heavy OG whale selling over the past weeks now being met with new whale and retail buying – all this meaning Bitcoin has stayed above the $100k level.

The US Senate Committee released the highly anticipated discussion draft of its part of the ground-breaking Crypto Market Structure Bill earlier this week, moving the legislation one step closer to clearing the chamber and potentially passing into law.

Jack Dorsey confirmed that 4 million Square merchants can now accept Bitcoin with no fees starting today!

Anonymity once belonged to cypherpunks, but privacy coins have been on a tear lately with Zcash flipping Monero last week. The rally seems to be fueled by a combination of hype, bullish technicals and a coordinated pump effort.

Ripple raised $500 million in funding last week, lifting its valuation to $40 billion – looking to position itself as a fintech firm bringing crypto and digital assets technology to institutional clients.

Shares of Strategy, Michael Saylor’s leveraged bet on Bitcoin, fell to their lowest level in seven months last week after BTC briefly dipped below $100k. 

President Trump says he does not know who Changpeng Zhao is, despite pardoning the Binance founder and multi-billionaire last month.

Interestingly, Trump’s World Liberty Financial earns an estimated $60-80 million per year from Abu Dhubi’s $2 billion investment in their USD1 that is held on Binance. Go figure. 

Bored Ape Yacht Club creator Yuga Labs will launch its much-awaited metaverse project ‘Otherside’ this week, in a desperate effort to reignite interest in the infamous monkey-themed NFT brand and in virtual worlds.

French crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger is considering a NYSE listing as cyberattacks drive record demand for its hardware devices, sending revenues soaring in 2025.

Other crypto news:

• JP Morgan says Bitcoin could rise to around $170k within the next 6-to-12 months as leverage resets and its relative volatility versus gold improves.

• Ripple’s RLUSD Stablecoin has reached a milestone $1 billion in market capitalisation less than a year after its December 2024 launch.

• The GTA 6 release has been delayed again to the end of next year, and despite years of speculation and rumors there is still no evidence of cryptocurrency integration. Sigh.

• A Satoshi era whale just sold all their Bitcoin after 15 years of hodling, dumping 11,000 BTC worth over $1.3 billion.

• A Russian crypto millionaire has died after his Lamborghini burst into flames in a suspected suicide.

• Coinbase has announced the upcoming launch of a new token sales platform that will allow U.S. retail investors to participate in initial coin offerings.

Macro news TLDR: Hegemony dies by overreach

Trump’s threat to arm Ukraine with Tomahawk missiles has handed Russia the perfect excuse to arm Venezuela with hypersonics – cue a potential Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0 like standoff.

For years the U.S. treated the post-Cold War world like a sandbox: invade, sanction, lecture, repeat. Old-fashioned aggression – gunboats, not handshakes – while the world moved on to more sophisticated diplomacy: trade deals, tech partnerships and soft-power networks.

The result? The Monroe Doctrine is now a dusty museum relic. Venezuela’s vast oil reserves are prime collateral to prop up an inflating global system. But the plot twisted: instead of capitulating, Caracas turned eastward, shopping in Moscow.

Russia, written off before the start of the war with Ukraine, is now one of the fastest growing economies in Europe, cashed up on Asian oil sales, and handing out missiles like party favors. And China banks the trade while BRICS grows less concerned about SWIFT bans. 

Sanctions? They’re the gift that keeps on giving – every freeze pushes another country to build alternatives. The U.S. now faces a multipolar global geopolitical chessboard where coercion is obsolete.

Key lesson: hegemony dies by overreach. Even the Financial Times agrees that the WTO order is on its last legs.

The dollar isn’t dying – it’s being replaced, one pipeline and one payment network at a time. In a desperate attempt to maintain U.S. dollar hegemony, a new plan has been hatched – the Stablecoin game is afoot to dollarise the world. But is it too late?

Economic news from the Americas

The Trump administration’s sweeping trade powers are at risk as the Supreme Court has signaled doubts about the legality of the global tariffs. If the ruling goes ahead, America could be liable to pay back trillions of dollars!

President Trump on Sunday announced a “dividend of at least $2,000 per person” will be paid to all Americans except for high-income people, saying the country is now wealthy as a result of his tariff policies – we expect 85% of U.S. adults receive this, resulting in $400+ billion to be handed out. The last stimulus payments of $1,200 in 2020 sparked rampant inflation!

The longest U.S. government shutdown in history is expected to end this week, but it has dragged consumer sentiment to a near record low in November, costing an additional $15 billion per week and causing major disruptions to services.

Democrats won a clean sweep in the three most contested races of last week’ s state elections – winning New Jersey, California, and New York, where Zohran Mamdani, a muslim and self-described democratic socialist, won the mayor’s race.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has confirmed the Trump administration is working to introduce 50-year mortgage terms to break the housing gridlock.

On a $500k loan, that would reduce the monthly payment by $355 but increase the total interest paid during the life of the loan by a whopping $750k. That’s one way to kick the can down the road! 

Tesla shareholders approved a stock compensation package for CEO Elon Musk worth $1 trillion if he meets performance targets over the next decade, meaning the world’s richest man could also become the first ever trillionaire.

Michael Burry, the investor who bet against the U.S. housing market leading into the 2008 financial crisis, has just placed a $1.1 billion bet on the collapse of the AI boom – targeting Nvidia and Palantir – and accusing hyperscalers of artificially inflating earnings. Timber!

Over in Europe & the Middle East…

Germany’s trade surplus narrowed even further in September, falling to its lowest level since October 2024, as a stronger-than-expected rise in imports outpaced export growth.

The E.U. has opted for expert-level talks to defuse tensions over Beijing’s rare-earth export controls, which leaders are calling economic coercion.

Britain’s Office for National Statistics latest data shows the unemployment rate rose to a higher-than-expected 5% in the three months to September. Meanwhile, the estimated number of payrolled employees in the U.K. fell by 32,000 between August and September. Ouch!

France’s budget progress has stalled again – they have an ultra curly challenge of wanting to be socialist and not being able to afford it. 

And in Asia Pacific…

Deflation pressures in China eased in October as consumer prices returned to growth after remaining in negative territory for the most part this year, supported by holiday season demand. Exports in October unexpectedly contracted by 1.1%, hit by lower shipments to the U.S.

President Trump held meetings with leaders of five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) at the White House last week as he intensifies his hunt for rare earth metals needed for high-tech devices, including smartphones, electric vehicles, and fighter jets.

The Reserve Bank of Australia warned that a lack of investment by business is holding back the Australian economy, further delaying more rate cuts. NZ should take note. 

Traditional owners have filed a native title claim over Melbourne and surrounding regions. The claim by the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people covers thousands of square kilometres.

In NZ, Prime Minister Luxon is laying the groundwork for asset sales after the 2026 election (if he wins a second term), saying “New Zealand needs to have a sophisticated conversation about asset recycling or selling existing assets to help fund the purchase of newer ones. 

ANZ bank announced annual profit surged 21% to a new record high. Recession anyone?

The NZD continues to weaken hitting a seven-month low of 0.56 against the USD and a 12 year low of 0.86 against the AUD, as the RBNZ is expected to cut interest rates again and deeper than originally expected.

That’s a wrap for this week!

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