U.S. stocks resumed their current winning streak in traditional markets, climbing for a third straight day as investors celebrated the positive third-quarter earnings reports from companies.
The tech-focused Nasdaq increased by 2.2%, while the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA), which also has a significant tech component, increased by 1.6% and 1.1%, respectively.
The energy market indicator Brent crude oil, which has been trading at $91 per barrel for the previous 24 hours, is still up more than 15% from the beginning of the year. Gold in safe havens was unchanged at $1,652 per ounce. The ailing social media oligarchy Meta released its most recent quarterly numbers on Wednesday, continuing the earnings season. In this year's slaughter of the stock market, tech companies have been among the worst impacted.
The closely followed Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index fell after two months of improvement. According to Lynn Franco, senior director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, "Consumers' expectations regarding the short-term outlook remained dismal." Investors will closely monitor home starts and durable goods orders on Wednesday and the monthly Consumer Sentiment Index from the University of Michigan on Friday.
On Tuesday, Bitcoin (BTC) had an unusual upward movement. The biggest cryptocurrency by market cap was recently trading at $20,300, up almost 5% over the previous 24 hours as chronically risk-averse investors were encouraged by the third-quarter results reports of several major brands. Bitcoin last reached $20,000 on Oct. 5.
Even more buoyant, Ether (ETH) surged beyond $1,500, reaching its highest level since the Merge and up more than 11% from Monday at the same time. On Sept. 15, the Ethereum blockchain underwent a technological update that changed the proof-of-work protocol to the more energy-efficient proof-of-stake protocol.
The price of SOL and ADA, two other significant cryptocurrencies, recently increased by more than 13% and 11%, respectively. The native cryptocurrency of the decentralized exchange Uniswap, UNI, recently increased by more than 8%. Over the last day, the CoinDesk Market Index (CMI), a widely used market index that gauges the performance of a selection of cryptocurrencies, increased by 5.59%.
Currently, asset managers' open interest in Bitcoin is 84% long (expectations of a gain) and 16% short, according to the Commitment of Traders report, which is produced every Friday and reflects data as of the prior Tuesday (expectations of a decline). The most recent numbers show a little improvement over the report from the previous week when asset managers were 80% long and 20% short. Since Sep. 6, when asset managers were 74% long BTC, we have observed a slight upward trend in this indicator.
