The US stock market is open for business, but the Dow doesn’t look poised to make much of a ruckus on Super Bowl Monday. The bitcoin price, meanwhile, continues to lurch toward an important technical test that could signal whether the cryptocurrency market is finally ready to flip bullish.

Dow Futures Flat ahead of US Stock Market Open

As of 8:26 am ET, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 3 points, implying an opening bell decline of 24.89 points. The Dow’s sister indices, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, were also eyeing minor pullbacks at the open.

The Dow had closed last week at 24,063 following yet another strong latter-week rally. This particular advance was bolstered by Labor Department figures indicating that the private sector had added 304,000 jobs last month, which was the largest jump in 11 months and came despite the uncertainty surrounding the longest-ever US government shutdown.

US traders waking up early to Super Bowl hangovers had little to chew on this morning, as many Asian stock markets are closed for the Lunar New Year. Exchanges in both South Korea and China will be closed for at least most of the week.

There will be plenty to digest following Monday’s closing bell, however, as Google parent company Alphabet will publish its highly-anticipated quarterly earnings.

Bitcoin Price Approaches Seventh Wedge

The cryptocurrency market enters the US trading session slightly in the red, having lost around $1 billion in the past 24 hours.

CCN.com previously reported that bitcoin is now in its longest-ever bear market, a period that has endured for nearly 415 days.

Writing in daily market commentary made available to CCN.com, eToro senior market analyst Mati Greenspan outlined the technical journey that the bitcoin price has taken en route to its 82 percent peak-to-trough decline. He said that the cryptocurrency has thus far encountered six wedges, four of which broke downwards into descending triangles. Now, it appears that the bitcoin price is approaching a seventh wedge at $3,000, the mark which most analysts say is providing critical support to the flagship cryptocurrency.

Greenspan wrote:

“With $5,500 (blue line) as the base, we’ve seen six different wedges, four of which have broken to the downside. Now that the blue line is broken, we’ve moved the support level to $3,000 and we can see that we’re now coming to the seventh wedge.”

We will have to wait and see how bitcoin responds to this technical test. Could the cryptocurrency market finally be nearing a firm bottom, or will the bears continue to twist the knife deeper into 2019?

For now, the bitcoin price continues to languish below $3,500. The asset made a valiant run toward that mark over the weekend, but the rally fizzled at $3,485. As of the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at $3,408 on Bitstamp, representing a 24-hour decline of 0.86 percent.

The wider cryptocurrency markets were similarly calm, with tron’s 2.92 percent gain proving to be the most volatile movement in the large-cap index. Further down the charts, Maker — the 19th-largest cryptocurrency — rose by 11.92 percent to lead the top 100 by a considerable margin.

Featured Image from AP Photo / Richard Drew. Price Charts from TradingView.