The Bitcoin and crypto markets had their second red week in a row, driven by negative news about the US crypto bank Silvergate. While the dollar index (DXY) weakened on Friday and the world’s largest stock index, the S&P 500, showed a strong recovery, Bitcoin and crypto headed south.
But despite this brief decoupling of Bitcoin from macro action, investors should keep an eye on key dates this week. If the rally in the stock market continues, Bitcoin may want to follow suit and make up the ground lost in the last few weeks.
Economic Data That Will Be Important For Bitcoin And Crypto
The state of the U.S. labor market and not one but two speeches from Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell will be the most important macro factors for the Bitcoin price this week.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, March 7 at 10:00 a.m. EST, Powell will be speaking to the Senate Banking Committee about the economic outlook in the United States. Following the recent re-acceleration in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, market participants will be paying close attention to Powell’s choice of words, whose statements could potentially move the financial markets sharply.
Investors will be lurking for statements on the Fed’s monetary policy stance at its next rate decision on March 22. As Bitcoinist reported, the next FOMC meeting could be the most important of the entire year.
On Wednesday, March 8 at 10:00 a.m. EST, the Fed Chairman will be answering questions from the House Financial Services Committee, and could once again specify his statements from the previous day. But whether Powell really makes new comments on the Fed’s monetary policy remains to be seen.
At the same time on Wednesday, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) jobs report for the month of February will be presented by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the data is unlikely to have much, if any, impact on crypto market prices, it is worth a look.
For the Federal Reserve, the still strong U.S. labor market is one of the most important factors to monitor. The estimate is 10.60 million job openings. In the previous calculation period, the number of job openings had been 11.01 million.
If US companies have added more jobs, as in the previous month, underpinning the strength of the US economy, this may provide a boost to financial markets. Recently, the market has tended to have a positive assessment of strong jobs data in the United States.
Chinese And US Marco Data In The Second Half Of The Week
On Thursday, March 9, new inflation rates will come out of China. With the Bitcoin price rising more than 2% last Wednesday in line with Chinese stocks after China’s manufacturing PMI came out extremely strong, it is also worth looking east. If the inflation data is lower than expected and warrants a looser monetary policy from China’s central bank, it could mean a boost for Bitcoin.
Of major interest will be the updated U.S. nonfarm payrolls (NFP) employment data on Friday at 8:30 a.m. EST for the month of February. A key question will be whether the February data confirms the January data that the U.S. economy accelerated at the start of 2023, or whether it was a seasonal bias.
Forecasters expect 200,000 new jobs to have been created last month, which would be a sharp drop from the 517,000 jobs created in January. If the forecast is undershot, it will confirm the suspicion that January’s strong number was a one-time effect.
In a bullish scenario, the US market proves stronger than the estimate, which could lead to rising prices in the financial markets as it would further reduce the probability of a recession.
This could also be confirmed with the U.S. unemployment rate, also released at 10:30 am EST. According to Trading Economics, the unemployment rate is expected to remain steady at 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
At press time, the BTC price remained flat at $22,417.
