Friday's Market Update (17 Feb, 2023)

18 Feb 2023 by rate3

Friday's early trading session showed that the markets initially reacted negatively to a remark made by Thomas Barkin, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and a former CFO at McKinsey, who stated, "I'm not taking as much signal from the data that we've gotten recently." However, the bullish momentum ultimately prevailed, and the NASDAQ managed to close the day in the green (opening: 11777, closing: 11787), with Bitcoin adding another 4.4% (opening: 23783, closing: 24820).

This reinforces my earlier assumption that the current bull run is being spearheaded by several large players who are firmly set on extracting as much value as possible for their individual portfolios, which is arguably short-term. This bullish momentum remains largely unsubstantiated by fundamental factors and is mostly based on the "push" of technical indicators, which have been propelled further than expected by Powell's "disinflation" comment.