The U.S. Department of Commerce announced the July retail sales report at 20:30 last night (15th). The result was a monthly increase of 1.0%, a new high since January 2023 and far exceeding market expectations of 0.4%; the annual growth rate was 2.66%, indicating that consumers even It has remained resilient in the face of high prices and borrowing costs.
However, it is worth noting that although retail sales in July hit the largest monthly increase in 19 months, the previous data was revised downwards by 8 degrees, and the economic situation still needs more data to be observed.
Alleviating worries about economic recession, the four major U.S. stock indexes rose
The improvement in U.S. retail sales comes as employment data also improves. On the same day, the Labor Department announced that the number of people claiming unemployment benefits decreased by 7,000 on a weekly basis last week to 227,000, which was less than market expectations of 235,000.
After alleviating investors' concerns that the economy is on the verge of recession, the four major U.S. indexes all rose on the 15th:
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 554 points, or 1.39%, to close at 40,563.06 points.
- The Nasdaq rose 401.89 points, or 2.34%, to close at 17,594.50 points.
- The S&P 500 index rose 88.01 points, or 1.61%, to close at 5,543.22 points.
- The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index rose 240.04 points, or 4.87%, to close at 5173.38 points.
Among them, semiconductor stocks led the gains, with Nvidia rising 4.05% to close at US$122.86, returning to above the 50-day moving average, and TSMC ADR simultaneously rising by 2.35% to close at US$173.96.
The chance of a one-point interest rate cut in September rises to over 70%
In addition, the CME FedWatch tool shows that the market predicts that the probability that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates by one tick to 5.00~5.25% in September has jumped from 64% a day ago to the current 74%, and the probability of cutting interest rates by two ticks to 4.75~5.00% The probability dropped from 36% to 26%.
Bitcoin briefly surged higher before falling
In terms of cryptocurrency, Bitcoin originally hit US$59,800 after the release of retail sales and unemployment benefits data. However, selling pressure re-emerged after 0:00 on the 16th. Bitcoin fell all the way, reaching a low of US$56,093 around 4:00 this morning. .
At the time of writing, it rebounded slightly to US$57,372, down 2.45% in the past 24 hours.
The opposite trend to that of U.S. stocks caught investors off guard. It is uncertain whether it is because expectations of a two-digit interest rate cut have been extinguished, or because Bitcoin is just in a downward trend and major investors have not yet reached their target price.
However, judging from Fibonacci and transaction-intensive areas, if Bitcoin is unable to hold the current price level, the next support may be around $54,500.
Ethereum has a similar trend, hitting a low of $2,515 this morning. It is currently trading at $2,565 at the time of writing, down 3.84% in the past 24 hours.
The entire network liquidated US$210 million in the past 24 hours
In the fluctuating market of Bitcoin, according to data from Coinglass, in the past 24 hours, the entire cryptocurrency network liquidated more than 210 million U.S. dollars (longs accounted for 180 million U.S. dollars), and nearly 57,000 people were liquidated.
