Oil continues slide, gold higher, bitcoin surges

Terrible week continues

Oil prices have been pummelled this week as turmoil in the banking sector has increased the risk of a significant economic slowdown or recession this year. Clearly, traders are not convinced that the worst is behind us which continues to weigh heavily on the price of crude, particularly going into a weekend when anything can happen, as we saw a week ago. Should calm prevail, oil prices could bounce back and a peaceful weekend may be the first step toward that.

Safe-haven push lifts gold

Gold is pushing higher again in risk-averse trade at the end of the week. It’s hardly surprising that we’re seeing this going into the weekend as we learned last week just how much can happen over the two days when markets are not open. With yields edging lower and gold trading near levels last seen in early February, it’s clear traders are adopting a defensive stance. Whether that continues in early trade next week will be determined by how eventful a weekend it turns out to be. Key resistance levels remain $1,960 – around the February highs – and $2,000, a break of which would be a major psychological move and signal how much fear remains in the markets.

Bitcoin rally unsustainable?

There are various theories floating around regarding crypto’s strong performance over the last week and frankly, the majority of them are more wishful thinking than logic. But that’s irrelevant at this point as the only thing that matters is that it’s up another 7% at the end of the week, more than 30% since last Friday, and some major technical levels have been wiped out in that time. The next is $28,000, followed by $32,500 above that. It seems pointless to try and anticipate where the rally will peak as past moves often didn’t make much sense either but still kept going, although this time seems particularly unsustainable. It should be interesting, regardless.

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