Afternoon.
Strange week, this one.
The US lost 23,000 jobs in July and the market threw a party. Bad news is good news again, apparently.
Here's what actually moved:
Wall Street: The S&P 500 closed at a record 7,757 and posted its best week since April. The weak jobs report cooled Fed rate-hike bets, and stocks loved it.
Oil: Crude fell almost 8% on hopes of a US-Iran deal, then climbed back above $80 when weekend talks on the Strait of Hormuz stalled. This one's driving everything else right now.
Crypto: Bitcoin logged its fourth straight negative week and couldn't hold $65k, with oil-driven inflation worries doing the damage. Meanwhile the SEC votes this week on its first major crypto rulemaking. We unpacked bitcoin's 200-day moving average test on the blog. Worth five minutes.
AI money: Three US startups each raised $1 billion or more in a single week, led by Hadrian's $1.37bn round.
At home: The rand firmed to around R16.34 as gold notched its biggest weekly gain since January and 80eight is potentially opening payment rails to 53 countries. More markets. More ways to move money
Read the bitcoin breakdown here: https://80eight.io/blog/bitcoin-hits-200-day-moving-average---a-long-winter-ahead
Keep an eye on oil this week. Everything else is downstream of it.
Chat soon,
The 80eight team
