Markets remained very calm ahead of Friday's holiday, with global markets basically maintaining levels at the previous day's level. U.S. Treasury and foreign exchange markets have been consolidating most of the time, and U.S. stocks were following a similar trend until a massive futures sell-off in late trading drove prices to lows. The first quarter of this year is coming to an end, and it is expected that the movement in the next 2 days will be mainly driven by rebalancing activities, and there will be no major data releases or important economic events in the rest of the week.
While institutional investors took a break, retail investors accounted for a record share of options trading volume, an enthusiasm that pushed average daily options trading volume to an all-time high in February. Former President Trump's SPAC has become the new favorite for retail inflows, with the stock up 16% after its first day of trading and valued at a staggering $8 billion Who said only cryptocurrencies can enjoy the meme-coin fun?
In terms of cryptocurrencies, after experiencing the pressure of GBTC’s continued selling last week, BTC has returned to the $70,000 range again. Fund outflows have slowed down and net inflows have returned to balance. March is still a very good month, with net inflows so far close to $3.9 billion.
Separately, regulators are in the news again, with the CFTC filing a lawsuit against Kucoin, alleging they illegally conducted over-the-counter commodity futures and margin trading and were not registered as a regulated Swap Execution Facility (SEF). Interestingly, the CFTC refers to BTC/ETH and stablecoins as “commodities” in its official complaint, in stark contrast to the SEC, which still maintains that all but BTC are “securities.”
