Investors have returned to something of a selling mood from the Memorial Day holiday, which also — hurrah — marks the unofficial start to summer.

That’s as trade tensions remained static following fresh comments from President Donald Trump which appeared to offer just mild encouragement over the China spat. From Japan, he said he expects a deal “sometime in the future.” That’s pretty vague for financial markets, which will increasingly hang hopes for a deal on a G-20 meeting in June, where Trump and China President Xi Jinping are expected to get together.

Investors may want to find a distraction until then, like bitcoin perhaps. While the barbecues and New York temperatures were heating up, so was that cryptocurrency. On Sunday, it hit $9,000, a level it hasn’t touched in a year.

That brings us to our call of the day from Think Markets’ chief financial analyst Naeem Aslam, who says signs are pointing to a fresh bull run for bitcoin.

“If you are not ready then get ready, because the bitcoin price is about to blast past the level of $10K, recovering half of its losses from its all-time high, a real embarrassing moment for those who said that the currency will never recover from its losses,” predicted Aslam, in a note to clients.

He sees that $10,000 breach happening this week or next, noting that bitcoin is trading above its 50, 100 and 200-day simple moving averages. Those are technical analysis tools that help create a continuous updated average price.

“The moving averages are very important because they define the trend; if the price stays above them, it shows that the uptrend is strong and when it starts to trade below them, then it means a downtrend,” he says.

Bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.59% , like other global assets, took a hard fall late last year, but unlike stocks, has had a tougher climb out of that hole. As Aslam reminds us, the cryptocurrency holds the title of one of the best-performing assets of 2019, up 140% year to date and up 70% in May alone. (Note, fellow cryptocurrency Litecoin LTCUSD, -0.93% is up 286% in 2019 so far).

Bitcoin vs. S&P 500

“This is what bitcoin is all about. Never doubt the resilience of the currency and the support it has among the community,” said Aslam. He also says momentum has been strong because institutional investors are getting involved, which he finds evidence of via rising volumes for bitcoin futures BTC.1, +0.28% contracts.

Investors should know that bitcoin is still considered a fairly new asset and tends to be a volatile one. The market has a history of big fluctuations, is still not legal tender and some platforms that sell digital currencies have been hacked.

Should bitcoin reach $10,000, then $15,000 is the next big resistance level, he says. But it’s also possible to see the price reach $12K or $13K before falling back to a support level of $8,000, then momentum may push it back up to $15,000, he claims.

Those rising volumes have not gone unnoticed elsewhere, as bitcoin faithful have been lighting up dedicated Reddit pages. “By now it’s very clear that the crypto winter is over and it’s now spring,” EToro’s senior market analyst Mati Greenspan commented to Forbes.

The market

Dow DJIA, +0.19% , S&P 500 SPX, +0.29% and Nasdaq COMP, +0.36% are all moving modestly higher at the open. More coverage in Market Snapshot.

Read: How stock-market bulls are adjusting to the threat of a messier U.S.-China trade war

The dollar DXY, +0.01% is up, along with U.S. crude US:CLN19, while gold US:GCM19 is softer. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 0.675% is down.

Read: The City of London is panicking over the idea of Boris Johnson as prime minister

Europe stocks SXXP, -1.02% mostly dropped, led by Italian stocks over concerns about gains for a right-wing anti-euro party in European elections. Asian equities finished mostly higher, with China’s Shanghai Composite SHCOMP, +0.08% up 0.6% and the Nikkei NIK, +0.70% gaining 0.4%.

The chart

Credit card use among Americans, specifically younger ones is on the rise. Our chart of the day (h/t The Daily Shot) from Liberty Street Economics , the blog of the New York Fed, highlights below data that shows 52% of those in their 20s had cards as of 2018. In 2012, only 41% in that age group had one.

“Credit card delinquency rates have been trending upward in the past few years—likely reflecting, in part, the increased presence of younger borrowers in the credit card market. However, despite this recent deterioration, credit card performance remains better than it was during the pre-Great Recession years of 2000-06,” said Liberty.

The buzz

Global Payments GPN, -1.34% and Total System Services US:TSS have announced a $21.5 billion merger of equals. Shares in the respective financial technology services and credit card processing companies are both rising.

The CEO of Huawei, Ren Zhengfei told Bloomberg he would “protest” any Chinese retaliation against Apple. The Chinese tech group also said it is examining its relationship with FedEx FDX, +1.16% after claiming two of its parcels were diverted without explanation. Shares of the package shipper are down a bit.

Johnson & Johnson JNJ, +0.15% is in the dock on Tuesday in Oklahoma, where the state prosecutor will argue that the consumer goods and drugmaker helped fuel the state’s devastating opioid crisis. Israeli pharma group Teva TEVA, -0.81% settled Sunday, and will pay the state $85 million.

It won’t be too busy this week on the earnings front, but we’ll get Uber’s UBER, -0.59% first set of earnings since a less-than-successful IPO for the ride-hailing app. Several pot companies will report, including Charlotte’s Web Holdings CWBHF, -4.48% , MedMen MMNFF, -1.07% and Curaleaf CURLF, -4.56% . Read more here.

The annual charity auction to have lunch with Berkshire Hathaway BRK.A, -0.33% BRK.B, -0.42% Chairman Warren Buffett kicked off this weekend. Bidding began at $25,000 on Sunday — last year the final price tag reached $3.3 million.

Among the data points on tap this week are weekly jobless claims, a revision of gross domestic product, and consumer spending. Ahead of that, Case-Shiller home prices were revealed to be the weakest in seven years.

Read:‘Whiff of U.S. recession’? It’s in the air again amid China trade fallout

Republican senators say that if the House passes articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, they will quickly quash them in the Senate.

Random reads

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Navy pilots say they watched UFOs spend hours on maneuvers

Unruly behavior on planes linked to smaller seats, scramble for overhead bins

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