Cryptocurrencies have been soaring overnight on media reports that President Biden and the US Treasury Department intend to formally announce today that they are preparing to start building a framework for potentially regulating and/or operating cryptocurrencies in the US, which investors appear to be seeing as a potentially big boost for the industry. Bitcoin is up 8.9% in morning trading, while Ethereum is up 6.8%.
Stock markets are bouncing back today in a big way across Europe with Frankfurt up 5.4%, Milan up 5.2%, Paris up 4.7% and London up 1.7%. US index futures have also caught a tailwind this morning with Dow futures up 1.6% and NASDAQ futures rising 2.2%, both erasing yesterday’s losses but only partially clawing back Monday’s declines.
The flow of capital into defensive havens and commodities appears to be backing off a bit. Gold is down 1.6% today, while the Japanese Yen and US Dollar are backsliding against other currencies with the Euro up 0.9% and the Canadian Dollar up 0.4% so far today. WTI crude oil is down 3.5% and has slipped back under $120.00/bbl, while copper is down 2.7%.
It’s another quiet day for economic news but things pick up again tomorrow with the US reporting consumer price inflation and the European Central Bank meeting.
