Around the Wall Street opening on February 16, Bitcoin (BTC) tickers dropped $51,684 and stalled around $52,000 as the most recent US macro data exceeded expectations.
PPI Provides No Comfort For Risky Investments Like Bitcoin
Up until the final TradFi trading session of the week, the price of bitcoin remained steady, according to data from TradingView and Cointelegraph Markets Pro. The Producer Price Index (PPI) figures for January added to the problem of U.S. inflation, coming just after the Consumer Price Index (CPI) print two days earlier.
PPI was 0.9% year over year, somewhat less than a month before but still 0.3% above market expectations. The outcome, together with the “hot” CPI, made investors even more cautious about the Federal Reserve’s potential to loosen fiscal policy this year. The likelihood of the Fed lowering interest rates at its March meeting was 8.5% as of the time of writing, which is less than half of the 17.5% odds at the beginning of the week, according to data from CME Group’s FedWatch Tool. Part of a statement on X (formerly Twitter) from trading resource The Kobeissi Letter reinforced its reaction to CPI, saying, “A March interest rate cut is likely completely ruled out after this data.
The day before, the price of bitcoin reached $52,884 on Bitstamp, the highest since late November 2021, but sellers put pressure on bulls. Popular trader Skew highlighted the importance of the 21-period exponential moving average (EMA), which is now trading at over $51,000, by analyzing four-hour timeframes. He stated, “This price action is choppy with a lot of inside bar closes that are essentially within the same intraday balance.” On February 15, there were net inflows of roughly half a billion dollars into U.S. spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
