Global investors are eyeing the outcome of FOMC meeting that will be going to release later today. Just in case you do not know, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) is the US central bank’s (Fed) monetary policymaking body. There is a total of 8 meetings per year, for the committee to discuss monetary policy changes, review economic and financial conditions, and assess price stability as well as employment output. FOMC meetings are scheduled on both Tuesdays and Wednesdays every six weeks (sometimes might delay one or two weeks or so). It had become a tradition for global investors to wait for the FOMC meeting statement on Wednesday afternoon (Thursday 2 AM in UTC+8 time zone). You can join the gang and spam the F5 refresh button here: https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/fomccalendars.htm
As soon as the FOMC statement is released, you are about to see big price action in the financial market, be it stocks, cryptocurrencies, or commodities. By then, the market will decide its direction whether to go bullish or bearish.
For the very first FOMC meeting in 2022, Bitcoin failed in every hourly section, capturing a fall of 4.56% in the first 4 hours of trading. The FOMC meeting in June recorded the most bullish trading section with over a hundred thousand Bitcoins traded over the short span of 4 hours, that’s almost the total of a single day trading volume. However, there is context to this, the reason why Bitcoin gained 5.11% after the June FOMC meeting is that the investors were expecting a rate hike of 100 basis points instead of 75. And also, Bitcoin just plummeted from $30,000 to $20,000 a few days before the meeting. What about the next couple of days of Bitcoin performance after FOMC meeting?
Remember Bitcoin fell the hardest after the first FOMC meeting? Well, it turned bullish in two weeks’ time, panic sellers had missed out on this bull run entirely. In March, the Fed approved the first interest rate hike of 25 basis points since December 2018. The market cheered and Bitcoin bounced back to where it was in January, at $47,000. This marked the peak for the year 2022. We can see from the chart clearly that the price of Bitcoin plummeted in the recent two meetings. According to the stats, the chance for Bitcoin to go up or down after FOMC meeting is 50/50. To me, the best scenario is neither both, it’s actually to move sideways. Sideways means a horizontal price movement that occurs when the forces of supply and demand are nearly equal. Quoted Josh Olszewicz from Valkyrie Investments, ‘Bitcoin price bottoms have historically followed extended periods of low volatility and unexciting price movements’. I believe the market will give us an answer after this FOMC meeting.
Line chart of S&P 500 and Bitcoin with timeline of FOMC statement release
Written by: [Coinlive] Nell