Stocks notch best week since June as Bitcoin holds $19K

Bitcoin (BTC/USD) traded above $19,200 late afternoon on Friday, with bulls looking to hold onto gains after the latest flip from lows around $18,700. There were also marginal gains for most top 10 altcoins, with Ethereum adding 2% and Cardano up 3%.

XRP was up 4%, at the time of writing, following the positive news around its case with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Stocks rally as Treasuries cool

Across Wall Street, stocks made some decent gains amid a reversal that had US indices posting a positive end to the week. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq rose by more than 2.3% each, with the Dow Jones Industrial adding over 700 points. The indices clocked 4.7%, 4.9% and 5.2% for S&P 500, the Dow and Nasdaq respectively for the market’s best weekly return since June this year.

The stock market’s super end to the week came as investors evaluated the possibility of the US Federal Reserve easing its aggressive rate increases much sooner than has been publicized over recent months.

TV journalist Susan Li summed up the various comments in a tweet:

US #STOCKS RALLY ON #FEDERALRESERVE COMMENTS👇

DALY: TIME IS NOW TO START TALKING ABOUT SLOWING RATE HIKES
"NEED TO DO EVERYTHING IN OUR POWER NOT TO OVERTIGHTEN"
"DON'T JUST KEEP GOING UP AT 75 BPS INCREMENTS"
"DO A STEP-DOWN, NOT TO PAUSE, BUT TO 50 BPS OR 25 BPS INCREMENTS"

— Susan Li (@SusanLiTV) October 21, 2022

The upside also materialized amid a series of encouraging corporate earnings results on Wall Street, with the retreat in Treasury yields another booster on the day.

But the gains on Friday cannot distract from the fact that 2022 has been painful for the markets, with a massive drawdown held aloft by the Fed’s hawkishness as inflation skyrocketed to a 40-year high.

The over $18 trillion wipeout in equities has the current losses at levels worse than during the 2008 and 2020 markets pain.

The @federalreserve hawkishness has caused an enormous amount of wealth destruction in US stocks and bonds with a drawdown of $18 Trillion in the US equity and fixed income markets. Far worse than 2008 and 2020’s market value destruction. pic.twitter.com/jvHAUyVbK1

— Bitcoin (@Bitcoin) October 21, 2022