5 Notable market movers for the week: Market review

Positive investor sentiment on Bitcoin

Bitcoin was in a roll this week, thanks to positive investors’ sentiment. The crypto recorded a series of record-breaking highs, just shy of $4,500 mark.

However, a retracement in the latter part of the week eroded the gains. Bitcoin was weighed down by concerns of a probable second split.

Bitcoin Cash (which was a result of the first split) performed exemplarily rallying about 60 percent to trade at $604.75.The newly created cryptocurrency can support an 8-mb block compared to 1-mb block supported by the original bitcoin.

Fed’s Minutes

Fed’s July meeting minutes had an impact on the market and they raised uncertainty over future rates hike. The minutes released on Wednesday showed that the Federal Reserve policymakers were undecided on future rates hike amid weak inflation concerns.

Some policymakers were concerned about the slow inflation and preferred to wait until it was clear that the slow inflation trend was transitory.

U.S. political intrigues

For a while now, political landscape in the U.S. has been taking a toll on U.S. indices and this week was not different. The political theatrics dented Wall Street rally with the Dow shedding 270 points. This came following rumors that Gary Cohn, National Economic Council Chairman, was set to resign after Trump failed to denounce white supremacist violence in Charlottesville.

However, the rumors were quashed by a White Official after saying that Cohn would not resign and “any reports to the contrary are 100% false.”

The U.S. stocks’ woes continued to pile on Friday, over political uncertainties continued with the resignation of Steven Bannon.
Gold rallies above $1,300

Federal Reserves’ minutes and the ongoing political saga in Washington were the main factors that saw the precious metal rally to a 9-month high of $1,306.

Gold however struggled to trade above $1,300 after investors reacted to upbeat consumer sentiment data for august.

Crude oil losing streak continued

Crude Oil WTI Futures’ stellar performance on Friday was not enough to reverse losses made earlier during the week; following concerns over increased U.S. production.
Crude oil production rose to 9,502m barrels per day; 79,000 barrels compared to last week.