After a rather nice bull run The Dow Jones Industrial Average has had a rough couple of weeks. Cryptocurrency also is experiencing a correction. Could there be a correlation between the two investment worlds?
We need to be careful using vague terms like "bull and bear markets" when crossing over into each investment space. The main reason for this is that cryptocurrency over the course of its amazing 2017 "bull run" saw gains of well over 10x. If you put $1,000 into Bitcoin at the beginning of 2017 you would have made well over $10,000 by the end of the year. Traditional stock investing has never experienced anything like that. In 2017 the Dow increased approximately 23%.
I'm really careful when reviewing data and charts because I realize that you can make the numbers say what you want them to say. Just as crypto saw enormous gains in 2017, 2018 has seen an equally quick correction. The point I'm trying to make is that we need to try to be objective in our comparisons.
Many that are new to the cryptocurrency camp are shocked at the recent crash. All they've heard was how all these early adopters were getting rich and buying Lambos. To more experienced traders, this market correction was pretty obvious due to the skyrocketing prices over the last two months. Many digital currencies recently made many folks overnight millionaires. It was obvious that sooner or later they would want to take some of that profit off the table.
Another factor I think we really need to consider is the recent addition of Bitcoin futures trading. I personally believe that there are major forces at work here led by the old guard that want to see crypto fail. I also see futures trading and the excitement around crypto ETFs as positive steps toward making crypto mainstream and considered a "real" investment.
Having said all that, I began to think, "What if somehow there IS a connection here?"
What if bad news on Wall Street impacted crypto exchanges like Coinbase and Binance? Could it cause them both to fall on the same day? Or what if the opposite were true and it caused crypto to increase as people were looking for another place to park their money?
In the spirit of not trying to skew the numbers and to remain as objective as possible, I wanted to wait until we saw a relatively neutral playing field. This week is about as good as any as it represents a period in time when both markets saw corrections.
For those not familiar with cryptocurrency trading, unlike the stock market, the exchanges never close. I've traded stocks for over 20 years and know all too well that feeling where you're sitting around on a lazy Sunday afternoon thinking,
"I really wish I could trade a position or two right now because I know when the markets open the price will change significantly."
That Walmart-like availability can also lend to knee-jerk emotional reactions that can snowball in either direction. With the traditional stock market people have a chance to hit the pause button and sleep on their decisions overnight. see now cryptocurrency
To get the equivalent of a one week cycle, I took the past 7 days of crypto trading data and the past 5 for the DJIA.
Here is a side by side comparison over the past week (3-3-18 to 3-10-18). The Dow (due to 20 of the 30 companies that it consists of losing money) decreased 1330 points which represented a 5.21% decline.
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