Week of 8 April 2019: Ether falls 4.05% while Bitcoin ends near flat after a Friday low
When two closely correlated assets finish a week with different results, what does the gap between them tell us about the move, and what does price data alone leave unanswered?
BTC fell from 5,170.27 to 5,131.30 (-0.75%) while ETH fell from 174.29 to 167.23 (-4.05%). Both set their weekly lows at 01:00 UTC on Friday 12 April. ETH underperformed BTC by 3.30 percentage points, and the ETH/BTC ratio dropped 3.32%.
What the data shows. BTC traded inside a 11.54% range: a high of 5,422.00 late on Wednesday 10 April and a low of 4,861.22 in the early hours of Friday 12 April. ETH covered 17.56%, from a high of 185.87 in the early hours of Monday 8 April to a low of 158.11 at the same Friday hour as BTC. Thursday 11 April was the worst day for both (-5.47% for BTC, -7.37% for ETH). The four weeks before had all been positive for BTC, ending with a 26.03% week. This week's return ranked at the 40th percentile of the 60 weeks of history recorded. Dollar volume was 1.52 times the prior twelve-week average for both assets.
What it does not show. The candles record prices, not motives. Nothing here identifies who traded or why ETH fell further than BTC. Both lows at the same hour could reflect one shared cause or two separate ones; the data cannot decide. The rebound after the Friday low is visible in the closes, but its cause is not.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility, the size of actual swings scaled to a yearly figure, reached 51.8% for BTC and 77.1% for ETH. BTC closed in the middle third of its week range (48.2%), ETH in the lower third (32.9%), so the same week's shape left the two assets in different positions. A desk would ask whether ETH's larger range and its earliest high of the week changed how the pair should be risked together.
Ether against Bitcoin. Hourly correlation was 0.9, which the data labels very close. Correlation measures direction, not size. ETH still lagged by 3.30 percentage points and the ETH/BTC ratio lost 3.32%, so the two moved together while ETH swung wider in both directions: its high stood 6.64% above its open against 4.87% for BTC, and its low fell further as well.
What would change this reading
- If ETH keeps falling faster than BTC in later weeks, the 3.32% drop in the ETH/BTC ratio starts a trend rather than a one-week gap.
- If BTC holds above this week's low of 4,861.22 while ETH breaks below 158.11, the divergence widens.
- If both assets fall together again at 01:00 UTC on a Friday, the shared low hour deserves separate study.
- If a later BTC week rises more than 26.03%, it would exceed the strongest of the four weeks before this one.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over the week, expressed as a yearly percentage
- ETH/BTC ratio
- the price of Ether expressed in Bitcoin, showing which asset held value against the other
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 40th percentile means 40% of past weeks were lower