Gold prices approached the $5,000 mark per troy ounce, driven by increased safe-haven demand and weakening of the US Dollar. Concurrently, Bitcoin price struggled, falling below $90,000 amidst tariff-related market volatility.<\/p>\n
UBS Group AG is considering introducing crypto investment services to certain clientele, allowing them to trade Bitcoin and Ethereum. This move comes amid growing interest in cryptocurrency markets and offers clients more investment options.<\/p>\n
The Federal Reserve and Bank of Canada meetings are anticipated, with expectations neither will alter interest rates. Amidst geopolitical tensions, market attention may also turn to potential announcements regarding the new Fed chair appointment.<\/p>\n
We’re seeing a solid economic pulse with the January PMI coming in at 52.8, suggesting underlying business activity remains in expansion. However, the market’s focus is squarely on the US Dollar’s sharp decline, fueled by suspected intervention to support the Yen. This currency turmoil is now the primary driver of market sentiment, overriding positive domestic data for now.<\/p>\n
With gold nearing the key $5,000 level, we should consider strategies that benefit from this momentum driven by the dollar’s fall. Looking back at 2025, we saw similar spikes in gold whenever Fed easing was priced in, but this intervention-led move feels more aggressive. Options traders should watch for elevated implied volatility, which has jumped over 18% in the past week, making strategies like call spreads attractive to manage costs.<\/p>\n
The suspected “rate check” from Japan’s Ministry of Finance has thrown the USD\/JPY pair into a tailspin, a move reminiscent of the massive interventions we saw back in 2022 when they spent over $60 billion. This high uncertainty makes long volatility plays, like buying strangles on the pair, a viable strategy to capture large price swings in either direction. Be aware that if officials deny intervention, the reversal could be just as swift and violent.<\/p>\n
Despite the currency chaos, the strong PMI figure should not be ignored, as it supports the case for domestic economic resilience. A weaker dollar is also a tailwind for S&P 500 multinationals, boosting the value of their overseas earnings, which accounted for roughly 40% of sales for the index in 2025. This backdrop suggests a bullish outlook on equities, making derivatives on the SPX a compelling play for continued upside ahead of the Fed’s decision.<\/p>\n
Create your live VT Markets account<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0start trading<\/a>\u00a0now. <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" U.S. business activity expands; gold nears $5,000; Bitcoin falls; UBS eyes crypto; Fed decision awaited.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":62,"featured_media":17042,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-live-updates"],"acf":{"acf_article_selection_author":null},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/62"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vtmarkets.com\/en-asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}