Friday is upon us after a volatile week, especially in the crypto world. And its crypto making the first moves as the broad market takes a leg lower after headlines that a leading exchange is under investigation by the CFTC for engaging with US clients.

BTC drops from $10,500 to $10,130 and ETH from $224 to $215. However, there is no follow-through and appears to be very much an isolated issue.

The market slowly drifts back to the opening levels in what must have been the quietest day for crypto in a while.

The weekend would be another story, with the usual liquidity issues exaggerating any moves. BTC decided to rally up as high as $11,100 before coming back to $10,500. ETH jumped to $236 but was back to $224 by late Sunday. If you had closed your eyes for 48 hours, you would never have known anything had moved!



For FX, Friday starts out as a reversal of some of USD’s losses. USDJPY rallies back to 107.80 and EURUSD drops back to 1.1220 . The market appears to have gotten a little ahead of itself following the Fed’s Williams original comments yesterday.

Weaker than expected Canadian retail sales data see USDCAD spike higher towards 1.3110. But as the US day gets going the European moves get trimmed and EUR heads back to 1.1235 and USDJPY to 107.60.

US equities open higher following on from some minimal gains in Europe and some robust gains in Asia, the Nikkei closing up 2%. And for most of the day, it’s some quiet sideways trading, that is until reports that Iran has seized a British Oil tanker hits the wires. The immediate reaction is to buy USD.

USDJPY heads back to 107.95 and EUR down to 1.1205. GBP slips to 1.2485 and XAU, rather surprisingly, drops to $1,421.

US stocks give up all of their earlier gains and end down on the day, the DJ lower by 68 points. All in all, a pretty inconclusive end to the week, with markets affected as much by trade disputes and tension in the Persian Gulf, than by expectations of an upcoming Fed rate cut.

The last few charts I have shown have been perfect examples of false breaks, thus the warning to always keep tight stops when trading breaks.

GBP through 1.2420 got some brief momentum but is back to 1.2500 now. Same with AUDUSD moving though 0.7050 – good for a while but now back below that level.

And XAU with its break above $1,440 but now the victim of a quick reversal to $1,425. For today it’s back to Crypto.

Eth has made an encouraging bounce off the sub $200 lows but now faces immediate headwinds around $236 where we now have a double top from the weekend’s price action.

Through there we can see the breakdown through $261 was sharp so expect that level to provide stiff resistance on the way back should we get there. To the downside, support will now come in around $191.00