Will the Holidays Bring Gifts or Coal to Bitcoin Investors?

With just seven weeks left in the year, it seems there's no consensus on who will win out: the HODLers or the profit-takers.
However, one study published in 2014 in the Review of Financial Studies used actual mutual fund equity trading data from 1999 to 2010. While not finding evidence of typical "window dressing," researchers Gang Hu, R. David McLean, Jeffrey Pontiff and Qinghai Wang found something more nuanced. 
 
"We find that both abnormally high institutional buying and abnormally low institutional selling are associated with price inflation," they wrote. "We further show that the portion of buy trades increases sharply on quarter-end, and especially year-end, days. Further analyses reveal that institutional buying declines at year-end, whereas institutional selling has an even larger decline at year-end, thereby creating the high portion of buys."
 
Basically, funds were increasing buys of their bigger stock positions up to near the year-end, but they stopped selling at an even higher rate. That, in turn, contributed to higher prices for those assets.
 
There may be a reason that happens, according to the researchers.
 
"We do not find evidence of targeted trading with year-end sales; the decline in selling is not greater for stocks of which institutions hold large positions. However, unlike buying a stock, delaying the sale of a stock is in most cases costless. It therefore makes sense for managers to not sell any stock at year-end if they are concerned about year-end net asset values."
 
Yet an institutionally-driven selloff may be in the cards for crypto, if one analyst is correct. 


Read the full column here.

 

– Lawrence Lewitinn

  A message from Copper

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To learn more visit copper.co/interest

Chain Links

Decentralized social media takes the stage as Facebook (Meta), Twitter and Reddit all discuss plans for embracing the metaverse. TAKEAWAY: Metaverse integrations are beginning to trend as the digital world becomes possible and profitable. Scalable blockchains and tokenization have paved the way for social media giants to incorporate cryptocurrency into their platforms and Morgan Stanley believes the potential innovation is already reflected in the companies' stock prices. 


Coinbase's shares tumbled as the company missed Q3 revenue estimates. TAKEAWAY: After a strong Q2, Coinbase struggled to mimic the previous quarter's results. Overall volume was down significantly during the quarter, mostly due to lower volatility throughout the broader crypto markets. The company announced that recent cryptocurrency purchases can be linked to utility, rather than speculation, which had been the case until very recently. 


The Consumer Price Index (CPI) jumped 6.2% year over year in October, the highest surge since 1990. TAKEAWAY: Energy, shelter and vehicle costs represented a large part of the jump in CPI, as inflation and supply chain issues worsened throughout the U.S. The equity and crypto markets dipped on the news as investors brace for a response from the Federal Reserve. 


Over $120 million in bitcoin long positions were liquidated across major exchanges during Wednesday's crash. TAKEAWAY: Bitcoin's move from $69,000 to $62,000 liquidated the most leveraged positions since Oct. 26. However, lower volatility in the crypto markets have kept both long and short liquidations substantially lower than in April and May, when daily liquidations reached as high as $10 billion. 

FTX US trading volumes jumped 512% in Q3 for an average daily volume of $360 million. TAKEAWAY: In the same period, Coinbase saw a significant decrease in volume, FTX jumped nearly 6x quarter over quarter. The platform's user base has grown 52% as FTX looks to expand throughout the U.S. and soon plans to offer derivatives to U.S.-based customers.

 

– Teddy Oosterbaan

Consensus 2022 by CoinDesk

Consensus 2022, the must-attend crypto and blockchain experience of the year, is heading to Austin, Texas, from June 9-12, 2022. This is the only festival showcasing and celebrating all sides of the blockchain and crypto ecosystems, and their wide-reaching effect on commerce, culture and communities. Register now for the lowest price.

Podcast episodes worth listening to:

Crypto Long & Short

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