The spark was Friday’s jobs report, and it was ugly—for the economy, that is. U.S. employers added only 29,000 positions in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly a third of what economists expected. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%.
Revisions made it worse. July was revised from a gain of 21,000 to a loss of 10,000 jobs, and August was cut from 162,000 to 133,000. Annual wage growth cooled to 3.0%.
Bad news for workers, good news for risk assets. That’s the weird math of this cycle.
The Federal Reserve raised rates a quarter point to 3.75%-4.00% on September 16 in a unanimous vote. A week before Friday’s report, bond traders gave an October hike a 64% chance. After it, those odds fell to roughly 16%-22%, depending on the snapshot.
It is the mirror image of last month. On September 4, a blowout August report sent Bitcoin sliding more than 2% to near $79,300 as hike bets rose. Bitcoin now trades about 8% above that level.
Stocks cheered too. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,722.72, up 0.73%, while the Nasdaq gained 1.19% to 27,190.86 and the Dow added 0.49% to 51,176.96. Nvidia hit a fresh record high, and stock futures edged higher Sunday night.
Altcoins are mixed. Ethereum trades at $2,711, up 0.59%, and XRP is at $1.51, up 0.81%. Solana slipped 0.91% to $120.31. All the top 10 altcoins are in the green, but not a single one has moved more than 1%, except for Hyperliquid, which is up 3.68% on the day to $93.17 and 6% on the week.
ETF money is not fading either. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $189.84 million in net inflows on the latest daily reading, with total net assets at $101.1 billion, according to Decrypt data.
Bitcoin price: Rejected at the door, but pushing up with force
The chart explains the hesitation. On the daily time frame, the $87,354 high remains the line to beat.
Momentum is strong. The Relative Strength Index, which scores recent gains against losses on a 0-100 scale where readings above 70 are considered overbought, sits at 64.7 which is hot but not extremely overbought. The Average Directional Index, which measures trend strength regardless of direction and reads above 25 as a strong trend, is at 43.4.
Exponential moving averages, or EMAs, track the average price over a set number of days while giving more weight to recent days. A golden cross happens when a faster EMA climbs above a slower one. The chart shows the 50-day EMA (the average price of the last 50 days) above the 200-day EMA, the classic version of a golden cross. This happened in mid-September as Bitcoin registered the second best performance in that month, ever.
But an even stronger sign has just appeared as the 100-day EMA has now also crossed above the 200 day. You can see it in the following chart. The 100-day EMA being the dotted white line.
Why is the 100/200 cross even more bullish? Because it’s harder to fake. A sharp two-month bounce can drag the 50-day EMA over the 200 day. To pull the slower 100-day EMA over the 200 day, the price of Bitcoin has to stay elevated for months, which means BTC has not just bounced from the sub-$60,000 levels of July but rebuilt its medium-term trend.
Together, the two crosses mean the short-term and medium-term averages both sit above the long-term one. Think of it as a second confirmation of the same story. The catch: EMAs lag, so a golden cross confirms a move that has already happened rather than predicting the next one.
On Myriad, a prediction market built by Decrypt‘s parent company Dastan, traders are leaning bullish on a short-term push. In the October highs market, an $87,500 touch trades at 80%, $90,000 at 59%, $95,000 at 25%, and $100,000 at 12%.
As far as future catalysts, the week’s calendar is short but loaded. The Fed releases the minutes of its September meeting on Wednesday, October 7, at 2:00 p.m. ET, and the BLS publishes September CPI on October 14. The Fed’s next policy meeting runs October 27-28, with a press conference on October 28 at 2:30 p.m. ET.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.
