Inflation Data Wednesday. Payrolls Friday. One Has the Fed's Full Attention.
October hike odds closed last issue at 64.2%. They're at 68.1% now, climbing through the weekend without a single new headline to explain it. Wednesday brings core PCE, the inflation gauge the Fed itself has called its central focus. Friday brings the jobs report. The more immediate story continues from closer-16, though: alts didn't flinch last issue while Bitcoin fell. They're flinching now, giving back exactly what we flagged as the standout gain in closer-16. Zcash is unwinding its own ETF-driven run, Bitcoin Cash its rally off CME Group's plan to list its futures, with real spillover between the two. The gap between the majors and the alts didn't close, it just took a few extra days to show up on both sides.
Fed odds kept climbing over the weekend. The alt rally started giving ground.
Bitcoin barely moved since Friday, still sitting in the mid-$80,000s after briefly touching a high over the weekend, Section 04 has the Pulse detail on how quiet things actually were underneath. Ethereum ticked up slightly. Gold and silver both fell hard, continuing a strange pattern where more traders are betting on them even as the price drops, Section 05 has that detail. Oil rose a little despite Trump rejecting Iran's latest ceasefire offer, the same story continuing from last issue. Stocks slipped modestly, and the dollar held roughly flat overall, though it swung around a fair amount over the weekend. Zcash and Bitcoin Cash, last issue's standout gainers, both gave back ground now that the news driving their rally is a week old and priced in, Section 02 has the story. Solana and XRP fell too, more modestly, since neither was riding either story.
Two data points this week. One has had the Fed's attention for weeks.
October hike odds climbed from 64.2% to 68.1% over the weekend, with no single headline behind the move. The market is simply continuing to price in the same direction closer-16 already described.
The Fed has been consistent about why: inflation, not jobs, is the real concern right now. Cleveland's Hammack called inflation risk "tilted to the upside." Governor Barr said "further policy adjustments are likely to be needed." That's why Wednesday's inflation reading, the Fed's own preferred gauge, is the week's biggest event, expected to come in a little hotter than last month.
Friday's jobs report is the other half of the week. Hiring is expected to slow sharply after last month's surprise strength, though unemployment should hold steady. Given where the Fed's attention is right now, a soft jobs number probably won't move much on its own, but a truly ugly one could reopen the conversation.
Zcash and Bitcoin Cash are giving back a rally that had nothing to do with the Fed. Zcash has been climbing all month because two new funds made it easier for investors to buy it, one from Grayscale, another from Europe's 21Shares. Bitcoin Cash jumped on its own news: a major futures exchange said it plans to list Bitcoin Cash futures next month, and pulled Zcash up with it. Both coins are now cooling off, a normal pullback after a big run, not a sign anything is actually wrong. XRP barely moved by comparison, since it was never part of either story.
A hot inflation print would be the second data-driven move in two weeks.
Here's the current state, plus three ways this week could evolve from here.
The Pulse read backs up how quiet price actually was this stretch, Section 04 has the detail, open interest rose on both BTC and ETH while price barely moved either direction. The odds move and the alt pullback are both happening without a matching move in the assets that would normally confirm directional conviction.
A hot print pushes odds toward the mid-70s range we briefly saw discussed last issue, and adds weight heading into Friday's jobs report, which would need a genuine miss to change the story Wednesday already set. Gold and silver, already under pressure from the price-versus-funding gap Section 05 covers, would have little reason to catch a bid in this scenario.
A soft print gives Bitcoin and the alts room to recover the ground lost since Friday, though a hot jobs report Friday, unlikely given consensus but not impossible, could still claw some of that back before the week closes.
An in-line print is the least dramatic outcome, and may be the most likely one to leave Bitcoin and the alts trading on their own story this week, the Zcash and Bitcoin Cash unwind, rather than the data. Odds would probably hold close to 68.1% rather than moving cleanly either direction, which would make Friday's jobs report the week's actual tiebreaker instead of Wednesday's print.
A quiet stretch on price, with real positioning building underneath.
BTC: Price barely moved, but open interest kept building and longs still took the liquidation hit.
Since we last published, BTC moved less than half a percent, essentially flat. $30.5 million got liquidated across the market this stretch, and over four dollars in five of that came from long positions getting forced out. Open interest rose a real amount over the same stretch, but price moved too little to clear our own threshold, so we're not calling a clean signal there. Funding stayed calm and the profitable traders' positioning showed a modest lean toward the longs. Net result, a quiet stretch price-wise, with real long-side liquidation and real position-building happening underneath it.
This comes straight from Hyperliquid, a crypto exchange where every trade and every wallet is public. We pull it to see who's actually winning right now and which way they're leaning, not just what price did.
ETH: Same quiet backdrop, and liquidations sat right at the edge of what we count as real.
Since we last published, ETH was essentially unchanged, down less than a tenth of a percent. $2.0 million got liquidated across the market this stretch, right at the edge of what we treat as a real total, and the large majority of that came from long positions getting forced out. Open interest rose a real amount over the same stretch, but price barely moved, too small to clear our own threshold. Funding and the profitable traders' positioning both stayed quiet. Net result, a very quiet stretch, with liquidations too close to our floor to lean on heavily.
Same read as the BTC section above, pulled from Hyperliquid for ETH specifically. Same exchange, same method, different asset.
Reading The Pulse. Six things get pulled and scored every check. Open interest against price shows the crowd's real position, not just its size: both rising means fresh longs are opening, both falling means longs are capitulating, OI rising while price falls means fresh shorts are opening, OI falling while price rises means shorts are covering. Funding's 1-day trend against its 7-day baseline: running above the 7-day average means the cost of holding longs is rising, running below means that cost is easing. TWAPs shows both the largest order on the board and the fastest one, often different wallets, since the largest shows commitment and the fastest shows who's actually pressuring price right now. Liquidations already realized are read by which side got forced out, since forced-out longs and forced-out shorts mean opposite things. Liquidations still ahead looks at the nearest-to-forced-out wallets on each side, since the single largest position is often not the closest to getting wiped out. And Tug of War compares the profitable wallets' positioning to the underwater crowd's: whichever side the profitable wallets are leaning is the side currently winning.
Gold's funding keeps climbing even as its price keeps falling.
One inflation print, one jobs report. Fed voices have leaned toward one all month.
Two data points ahead. Position for either answer, not one.
The alt pullback happening now, XRP, Zcash, and Bitcoin Cash all giving back ground, still reads as a normal give-back after an outsized run rather than a shift in underlying demand, Section 02 has the detail.
Gold's price-versus-positioning gap widened again this issue, Section 05 has the numbers. That's a real, building cost for anyone long gold on leverage right now.
Fed voices have leaned toward inflation as the bigger concern all month. Watching how the market actually reacts to Wednesday's inflation print versus how it reacts to Friday's jobs report is a clean, live test of whether that pattern holds.
Earn: Hyperliquid remains the richest venue for buying spot and selling the perpetual against it, 9.6% annualized on the 7-day average, down from last issue's 11.4% but still the clear leader. The 1-day reading, 6.3%, sits below the 7-day average, a real but modest cooling, nothing that clears this series' 3.5-point signal threshold on its own. Liquidation on this trade sits far out at $163,763.90, a 95.1% move required.
Borrow: Crypto.com remains the cheapest venue to borrow against, and the story here is more dramatic than last issue. The 7-day average is -5.0% annualized, meaning the long side is now collecting even more than the -1.7% we saw last time, a real, deepening reversal. The 1-day reading, -4.2%, and 3-day, -8.3%, both stayed deeply negative, while the 14-day (+0.6%) and 30-day (+0.2%) averages are still barely positive, confirming this is a genuinely recent shift, not the settled state of the trade.
Read the Lesson →This issue's board gives us a different comparison than usual, the same strike at two different expiries rather than two different strikes. The $95,000 BTC call, 13.3% out of the money, pays $607.84 at 32 days for an 8.4% annualized yield. Push the same $95,000 strike out to 60 days and the premium more than doubles to $1,657.08, and the annualized yield actually rises to 12.1%, the market pricing extra compensation for the additional time, not just linear decay.
Ethereum's board shows the identical pattern. The $3,000 call, 11.3% out of the money, pays $57.30 at 32 days for a 24.6% yield. At 60 days, same strike, the premium more than doubles to $119.32, and the yield climbs to 27.1%. Both assets say the same thing this issue: right now, going further out in time is being paid for at more than a proportional rate.
Read the Lesson →The Bitcoin against the Nasdaq 100 spread sits at 113.63 now, up 5.3% over the past 100 bars, BTC gaining ground on QQQ. Worth flagging on its own: the 24-hour correlation between the two legs has jumped to 0.84, well above their 60-day baseline of 0.31, a real, current shift toward moving in lockstep rather than their usual looser relationship. When correlation runs this hot, a pullback in one leg tends to drag the other with it.
The Intel against Tesla earner-versus-spender rotation continues in Intel's favor, now at 0.322, up 14.2% over the same window. This rotation has now run three issues in Intel's direction without a real pullback, worth watching for a reversion, not fading it outright.
The WTI against Natural Gas carry spread is the one to really pay attention to. The ratio itself fell 8.65% as natural gas gained ground, but the funding side tells a louder story: shorting natural gas against a long WTI position is projecting +$2,411.72 over 30 days and +$29,342.62 annualized on a $200,000 position, an outsized premium versus its own recent history. Worth a second look before assuming that carry holds, a premium that rich usually means the market is pricing a genuine risk into natural gas specifically.
Read the Lesson →This content is produced by Harmonic for educational purposes. It is strategy education, not investment advice.