Week of 7 October 2024: Bitcoin closes 0.08% higher after swinging 9.39% inside the week
When a week opens and closes at almost the same price but moves nearly a tenth of its value in between, what can the path of prices tell us that the weekly return cannot?
BTC finished at 62,870.02, just 0.08% above its opening 62,819.91, yet ranged 9.39% from a high of 64,478.19 on Monday to a low of 58,946.0 on Thursday. ETH returned 1.18% over a range of 8.17%. Dollar volume sat below the prior twelve-week average for both assets (0.71 and 0.61 times).
What the data shows. Both assets set their weekly highs in the same hour, 14:00 UTC on Monday 7 October, and their weekly lows in the same hour, 18:00 UTC on Thursday 10 October. The week came back after that low: Friday 11 October was the best day, +3.67% for BTC and +2.22% for ETH. The worst day was Wednesday 9 October, -2.45% and -2.88%. Each asset closed in the upper third of its week range (70.9% for BTC, 72.6% for ETH), so the finish was near the top of the path even though the weekly return was close to zero. Realised volatility, the size of the swings that actually happened scaled to a yearly figure, reached 38.2% for BTC and 46.9% for ETH. Trading activity was light: BTC dollar volume was 0.71 times its prior twelve-week average and ETH 0.61 times. The return ranked at the 47th percentile of the 347 weeks of history for BTC and the 54th for ETH, near the middle of past weeks.
What it does not show. Close-to-close returns describe the start and end of the week and nothing in between. These candles do not say what moved prices from the Monday high to the Thursday low, or who was trading. Volume below its average cannot tell us whether fewer participants acted or the same participants traded less.
What a careful desk would check. A 9.39% range inside a 0.08% weekly return means a position sized on the weekly number would have faced the full path anyway. A desk would test its stops against the Thursday low of 58,946.0 and the largest hourly move, -1.52% for BTC in the hour starting 18:00 UTC on Monday, rather than against the weekly close.
Ether against Bitcoin. The pair moved closely (hourly correlation 0.85) and in the same direction. ETH gained 1.1 percentage points more than BTC and the ETH/BTC ratio rose 1.1%, leaving ETH 39.31% below its 52-week high against BTC's 14.55%.
What would change this reading
- If a later week closes below 58,946.0, the Thursday low stops looking like a floor inside a range.
- If BTC regains 64,478.19 on rising volume, the quiet 0.71-times volume figure reads as hesitation rather than absence of demand.
- If ETH keeps outperforming by about 1.1 percentage points a week, the relative move becomes a trend rather than one week's difference.
- If funding stays near its average of 0.0035% for BTC while the range stays wide, positioning is not leaning heavily in either direction.
Terms
- realised volatility
- how much the price actually swung over the week, expressed as a yearly percentage
- range
- the distance between the week's highest and lowest price, as a percentage of the low
- percentile
- the share of past weeks with a lower value; the 47th percentile means 47% of past weeks were lower