Week of 20 May 2019: Bitcoin closes at a 52-week high as the Sunday rally outpaces Ether
When one asset prints a 52-week high after four rising weeks and the other lags, what does a single week of price data establish about the move, and what does it leave open?
BTC rose from 8,147.94 to 8,614.43 (+5.73%) and closed at its 52-week high. ETH gained 1.96% (259.37 to 264.45) and still sits 57.62% below its own 52-week high. Both fell to a Thursday low before a Sunday rally, on volume 2.06x (BTC) and 1.79x (ETH) the prior 12-week average.
What the data shows. Both assets bottomed first and topped last. BTC's low of 7,461.00 came at 09:00 UTC on Thursday 23 May and its high of 8,740.00 at 22:00 UTC on Sunday 26 May; ETH followed the same hours, low 231.10 and high 269.40. Sunday 26 May was the best day for both (BTC +7.37%, ETH +5.71%) and carried the largest hourly move (+6.13% for BTC, +3.49% for ETH in the hour starting 19:00 UTC). Wednesday 22 May was the worst day (BTC -3.49%, ETH -3.83%). Both closed in the upper third of their weekly range (BTC 90.2%, ETH 87.1%), and BTC closed at its 52-week high. Trading was heavy: BTC dollar volume of 2.71 billion was 2.06 times its prior 12-week average, ETH 0.92 billion at 1.79 times. BTC's weekly return ranked at the 80th percentile of the 66 weeks on record, after four straight up weeks (0.95%, 8.77%, 20.68%, 16.94%).
What it does not show. The candles say nothing about who was buying or why. A close at a 52-week high on heavy volume is a fact about transactions, not about durability: it does not tell us whether the buyers were new entrants, short sellers closing, or leveraged positions that would unwind quickly. A position entered near the low and one entered at the open saw very different weeks, given the 17.14% range. Funding data is absent here, so the cost of holding leveraged positions cannot be read at all.
What a careful desk would check. Realised volatility of 67.8% a year for BTC (77.9% for ETH) describes how much the price actually swung, scaled to a yearly figure. After four consecutive up weeks and a close at the high, the relevant test is whether the Sunday rally was carried by a few hours — it partly was, with the week's largest hourly move at 19:00 UTC — and whether volume persists into the following week. A desk would also note ETH's larger volatility and smaller gain, which argues against treating the two as interchangeable exposure.
Ether against Bitcoin. Hourly moves were close but not identical (correlation 0.82). ETH underperformed BTC by 3.77 percentage points and the ETH/BTC ratio fell 3.56%. ETH is 57.62% below its 52-week high while BTC sits at its own, so the gap is a difference in starting points as much as in this week's demand.
What would change this reading
- If BTC trades below its weekly low of 7,461.00 in a later week, this week's close at a 52-week high reads as a peak rather than a breakout.
- If volume falls back towards its prior 12-week average while price holds near 8,614.43, the move was a one-week event in activity terms.
- If the ETH/BTC ratio keeps falling after a -3.56% week, the divergence between the two assets is becoming a trend rather than a single week's lag.
- If BTC's fifth consecutive week is down, the four-week run of gains that framed this week ends, which changes how the 80th-percentile return is read.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 80th percentile means 80% of the 66 recorded weeks were lower
- close location
- where the closing price sits within the week's high-to-low range, as a percentage