Silver has led precious metals higher, rising strongly to reach a new record high yesterday before falling back, touching $58.
- Precious metals, especially Silver, remain in focus. Silver made another strong bullish move yesterday, touching $58 per ounce at one stage. Trend and momentum traders will be interested in being long here, but as it is a breakout on high volatility, there is much doubt that it can go much higher. Traders might want to be long with an unusually small position size. I am long with a little under half of my normal volatility-based position. However, Silver and other precious metals have pulled back, including Gold. These might also be interesting assets for day traders to look at today, with not much else going on in the market.
- Global equities are mostly flat, although some Asian indices (notably the Korean KOSPI) have seen gains today. Last week was generally a good week for stock markets, with the broad S&P 500 Index closing the week just below a record high weekly closing price. It is still a bull market, and it is December in a year of gains, which suggests we are likely to see a "Santa Claus" rally and higher prices, possibly even new all-time highs.
- Bitcoin still looks weak after it fell quite strongly in early trading this week. It is currently trading below the round number at $90,000. Bitcoin's underperformance recently compared to other risky assets seems significant. However, we may have seen a bottom at the support level of $85,369. If this level holds, it could become a higher low, which could be an early bullish sign for long-term buyers. Most other cryptocurrencies are also performing poorly and losing value, leading to rising concern for the entire crypto ecosystem.
- In the Forex market, the strongest major currency since the Tokyo open is the Australian Dollar, with the weakest major currency being the Japanese Yen. The USD/JPY currency pair is rising again but still trading well below ¥156.00. Trend traders will still be long of this currency pair, although they will remain vulnerable over the short-term to potential intervention from the Bank of Japan or Japanese Government which does not want to see the Yen depreciate much further.
- There was a release yesterday of US ISM Manufacturing PMI data which came in slightly lower than expected.
- There will be a release of Australian GDP data very early tomorrow, which is expected to show quarterly growth of 0.7%.
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