It was a slow and easy week before Christmas. The NASDAQ index closed lower by (NASDAQ⬇️1.9%) at $10.498 and S&P 500 lower by (S&P500⬇️0.2%) at $3.845. Digital Asset market had outperformed the US equites again, with Ethereum closing higher by (ETH⬆️2.9%) at $1.219, and Bitcoin ended the week higher by (BTC⬆️0.5%), closing at $16.842. Overall, it was a quiet week with no significant moves in both markets as many investors and traders called it a year. The year 2022 is about to close and we expect that 2023 will be the year of decentralization and accelerated development of decentralized apps, or dapps. The sentiment will be heavily affected by the Fed’s next moves, especially during the first half of 2023, as the Bank closed its last meeting of 2022 with a more hawkish tone. It had also revised the fund rates forecast further up, claiming that the rates will be reaching about 5.13% in 2023 (FOMC’s median), with 5.38% as the highest level. During its last meeting in mid-December, the Fed raised rates by 0.50% and indicated that the recent signs of cooling inflation did not provide enough evidence that the fight against high inflation is done.
The Fed’s chair said that they would need to see a “substantially more evidence” that inflation is abating. The next inflation reading will be again an important metric to watch for. We believe that the US inflation eased further to 6.7% p.a. with core CPI at 5.9% in December 2022.