Week of 4 November 2019: Ether rises 4.09% while Bitcoin falls 1.71%
When two assets that usually move together finish the week in opposite directions, how much of that split is visible in the price path, and what would a desk need before calling it a change of trend?
BTC closed 9,039.47 after opening at 9,196.46 (-1.71%), while ETH rose from 181.53 to 188.96 (+4.09%), a gap of 5.8 percentage points and a 5.9% rise in the ETH/BTC ratio. Hourly correlation was 0.71. BTC volume matched its prior 12-week average (1.04 times), while ETH volume ran below it (0.82 times).
What the data shows. The two assets followed different paths within the week. BTC set its high of 9,513.68 at 20:00 UTC on Monday 4 November and its low of 8,696.00 at 14:00 UTC on Friday 8 November, closing in the middle third of its 9.4% weekly range. ETH set its low of 180.36 at 04:00 UTC on Monday, before its high of 195.09 at 05:00 UTC on Wednesday 6 November, and closed in the middle third of its own 8.17% range. ETH's low preceded its high, while BTC's high preceded its low, an ordering visible in the week's path but not itself a cause of the closes. Hourly correlation of 0.71 is what a close co-movement looks like when the two assets part ways within the week. BTC funding stayed positive at every reading, averaging 0.012% per eight hours with a minimum of 0.01%, so long positions in perpetual contracts (futures with no expiry) paid short ones throughout. Realised volatility, the swings that actually occurred scaled to a yearly figure, was 40.6% for BTC and 39.9% for ETH.
What it does not show. The candles do not say why the two assets parted. Nothing here identifies who was trading or how positions were sized. ETH's larger move rests on lighter volume, 0.41 billion dollars at 0.82 times its prior 12-week average, and thinner activity can magnify price without confirming a shift.
What a careful desk would check. Both assets sit well below their 52-week highs: BTC 35.25% below, ETH 47.2% below. Within such gaps, one week of divergence may not change direction. A desk would ask whether the ETH/BTC ratio gain of 5.9% holds when volume returns towards its average.
Ether against Bitcoin. ETH outpaced BTC by 5.8 percentage points. Its weekly return ranked at the 69th percentile of 90 weeks of history, BTC's at the 34th.
What would change this reading
- If ETH gives back the 5.9% gain in the ETH/BTC ratio over later weeks, the split reads as a short-lived relative move rather than a reordering.
- If BTC trades below this week's low of 8,696.00 while ETH holds above 180.36, the divergence has become a trend rather than a week.
- If BTC funding stays at or above 0.01% per eight hours while price falls below 9,039.47, longs continue paying to hold a position that is not rising.
Terms
- hourly correlation
- how closely two prices moved together hour by hour, on a scale from -1 to 1
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over a period, expressed as a yearly percentage
- perpetual contract
- a futures contract with no expiry date that tracks the spot price through regular payments between long and short holders