The cryptos bounce led by altcoins, precious metals chop fest, USD and US stock markets weakness were last week’s highlights. In anticipation of the US supreme court’s decision on tariffs and potential developments around Iran, I attempt to construct my trading plan for the next week.

In the last report I wrote that:

When I wrote the above, BTC price was about $70k. One week later and BTC is a bit lower, while OTHERS was up +5% on the week a few hours ago, although it has now corrected to +2.7%. It looks like some people rushed to position in altcoins, besides the obvious short squeeze. I don’t know if this will affect BTC’s ability to reach the bounce targets mentioned above. If BTC had reached a price close to the first target level of $73,949, then OTHERS moving +5%, would not look odd to me. I would consider the bounce healthier and would look for the next targets above.

However, this is not the case and I feel something is wrong. Given various anticipated news and the US stock market state (more on this later), I would expect the bounce to end during the next week, although I don’t have a clue about the price it will end. Monday is a US bank holiday and therefore this is an extended weekend. A lot could happen during low liquidity hours until the NY open on Tuesday, but then I would expect a reversal between Tuesday and Thursday.

It looks like this Friday we will get news from the US supreme court regarding the tariffs case. I would expect markets to reduce risk to manage the uncertainty. The same day, announcements are planned for GDP and Core PCE data.

Coinbase’s quarterly earning announcement revealed a net loss of $667m. I would find it normal for a crypto exchange to report lower profits for a quarter when crypto sentiment plummeted, but how on earth did they manage to make such a big loss?

Coinbase’s CEO has sold $550m of $COIN stock so far. He has been relentlessly selling 88 times since April 2025.

On the geopolitical front, it looks like the US army is intensifying the development of forces, offensive and defensive alike, in the middle east. They appear to negotiate with Iran for weeks and are signaling positive signs about progress, but could this be a bluff? The military build up in the area is supportive of this hypothesis. I read somewhere on the internet, someone noticing something interesting: Putin waited for the 2022 winter olympics (then held in China) to end, in order to invade Ukraine. The current winter olympics end next Sunday 22/02… Of course, this is very speculative, don’t trade on this, but keep it in mind.

In the last report, I wrote:

Gold failed to bounce to $5,285, but made an SFP at $5,113, which led to a -4% move. I can’t see any obvious opportunity here. I see two equally possible scenarios: either gold breaks the mini range and reaches $5,285, or it continues the chop fest possibly to test the swing low of $4,670. I don’t want to do anything until we reach one of the two targets, where I will have to re-evaluate.

The gold SFP at $5,113 led to a -13% intraday move on silver, reaffirming silver is a leveraged gold play. The silver chart is much weaker than gold’s and point to a test of the $63,90 swing low with a higher probability than gold testing the swing low of $4,670. This can’t happen with a rising gold, but I expect any gold weakness to crash silver’s price.

Again, I can’t think of an obvious short-term play on silver, but in the long run I would expect it to hit the $55 level. I would expect this to be a huge support and potentially offer a good long trade. As it stands now, I don’t think I would try any silver long until it reaches this level. Until then, I think the playbook should be to short silver on low timeframe gold’s weakness and don’t touch it otherwise.

I want to remind you that copper had the strongest narrative among metals besides gold. The AI consumes a lot of power and the grid needs to be upgraded. So, copper was and still is seen as one of the AI boom’s main beneficiaries. Yet, it has shown the worse performance among all metals. Another reminder that metals did not run because of their narratives, but because gold had a good run.

On the daily copper chart we can observe a confluence of the 50MA and of a trend line connecting higher lows since late November. If copper loses these two, I would expect it to drop to the first target of $5,5305 and then to fill the gap at $5-$5.11. As long as it remains above these two levels, I will abstain.

Natural gas gave back the whole move since mid January and came back to its base at $3.02-$3.16 level on the futures chart.

On Thursday we had a bearish US reserve number and on early Friday hours (EU time) we got a very bearish weather forecast. However, the price closed on Friday higher than Wednesday. I interpret this as a signal that potentially the market can’t get lower before having a decent bounce first. And there are various gaps above. I think the next week we could fill one (+5% from here) or two (+19% from here) of them, if we are a bit lucky, which in this case means a weather forecast slightly less bearish than that of Friday. The market positioning according to the last COT report is still crowded short, although less heavily than mid January. Taking into account all of the above I opened a long position before the Friday close. I don’t expect this to play out immediately with a Monday gap up, it will probably require patience of about 1 or 2 weeks. If you trade the CFD of the cash contract, they pay you 0.7% per day to keep your long open. This gives me a cushion of 4.9% until next Friday or 9.8% until the Friday of following week. I think that’s enough time and cushion to wait for a slightly less bearish weather forecast. As with all trades, this one could go wrong, but I think its a +EV move.

Regarding CHF/USD, I closed my long intraday on Wednesday when it failed on the orderblock defined by the 29/01 candle. This was the third long the $1.29045 level has offered. As long as this level holds, I would expect higher prices. But, I have found a better way to play the CHF strength.

I noticed a breakdown from a descending triangle on the weekly EUR/CHF chart. EUR is on a multi-year downtrend against CHF and the breakdown from the triangle points to downside continuation. I will look at low time frames for a short entry next week.

Given how strong the US stock markets have been since 2023, I am very cautious to write anything non-bullish, but I am afraid I will have to take my chances here.

I don’t like what I see on Nasdaq (SPX is similar). This looks like a toping formation and reminds me of the price action between December 2024 and late February 2025. I feel that the probability the current price action will resolve in a way similar to March 2025 is increasing. I will not short it, I hate shorting US stock indices, but I will be monitoring this chart in order to take decisions regarding cryptos.

I found the following twit interesting.