Last week began with markets responding to Trump’s tariffs threats and then turned around in Wednesday when an initial agreement on Greenland was announced. While US stock indices returned to where they were before the tariffs threats, BTC did not. Also, it looks like the tariff threats have set into motion forces on bond markets and Forex that did not unwind when the new tariff war was postponed. There’s a bond crisis in Japan that spills over all bonds and currencies markets. Gold broke out to new ATHs leading the rest metals higher. Natural Gas made a historic weekly upwards move of +70%. Let’s unravel each one of these development and look ahead to the next week.

BTC lost the critical level of $93,530 on Monday and as discussed in the last report, this would lead to lower prices. Unlike US stock indices, BTC did not return to the pre-tariff threat levels, after the Wednesday’s u-turn. The chart looks damaged, as the price has lost the daily 50 MA. I see a bear flag forming on the daily chart, which points to downward continuation, with the first target being the swing low of $86,363.

To get a short-term bullish bias again, I would need to see first a reclaim of the daily 50MA currently at $90,160 and then a reclaim of the monthly level of $93,530.

The Clarity act is not going to be voted in 2026 and after the November midterm elections, Republicans will not control the House of Representatives and therefore will not be able to vote any bill. The Clarity act would be the last positive catalyst for cryptos and without this, I can’t see how we are going to see a bear market rally stronger than the recent one that topped at $97,963.

Saylor keeps buying BTC worth of billions, only to offer as better intraday short entries. His average entry has reached $75,979.

The 2 weeks chart provides more clarity regarding to what part of the bear market we are currently in. The price just filled a FVG and rejected there. Probably, we won’t see a bear market rally leading to higher prices than $97,963. We are in a bear market for 3.5 months already. The January bear market rally looks to me to be the analog of the March 2022 bear market rally and we are about to lose the 50MA on the 2 weeks chart, like we did in April 2022. Are you ready for fun?

The FOMC meeting is scheduled for this week on 28/01. It will be the first FOMC meeting after the start of a criminal investigation against Powell related to the FED building renovation. Let’s watch his speech and the market’s reaction…

Last, but not least, the tariff threat against EU has been withdrawn, but yesterday Trump made another tariff threat against Canada this time.

Gold broke out on Tuesday amid geopolitical uncertainties around Greenland and tariffs and instability in bond markets. As mentioned in the previous report, when gold moves up, I look at longing the strongest metals while when it shows weakness (e.g. consolidation), I look at shorting the weakest. In the strong camp I put silver and platinum, in the weak camp palladium and copper. COT positioning confirms this grouping, with large speculators being heavily long only on palladium and copper.

There is no sign of weakness yet on gold and we don’t know where the next consolidation level will be. But we are approaching $5k, which has been the psychological target level for many. I will be closely monitoring gold’s price next week. I don’t trade gold, but it dictates my decisions on the other metals, as explained above.

Once again silver outperformed gold on the upside, with a weekly +14.45% move compared to gold’s +8.36%. But it has reached the 3 digit status, that was a target for many. I don’t know where this rally ends, it depends 100% on gold.

The undisputed metal star this week was platinum. It broke out to new ATH with the strongest weekly performance among all metals, i.e. 18.02%. Given it’s good COT positioning data, I could see this higher if gold keeps going up.

Palladium’s +11.33% move this week was a surprise for me. I can’t rule out a new ATH above $2,129, if gold helps, but it would be a candidate for short if gold cools off, especially if this cooling off comes with a fake out of the $2,129 level.

Copper is the metal with the heavier long positioning last week according to COT data and no surprise it was the weakest. Same story as palladium for me. If gold helps, it could make a new ATH, but when gold cools off, it becomes a short candidate for me.

Besides metals, last week my interest was on natural gas and coffee.

In the last report, I noticed the opportunity in natural gas, given how oversold the market was and the potential weather change to colder that could lead to a short squeeze. We got our short squeeze with the Monday open, a huge +12% gap up. I closed my long then, satisfied with a very successful trade, only to see it closing the week with a historic +70% move… This was the biggest natural gas weekly candle in the history. It’s one of the times you feel you have failed, even if you have secured a significant profit. That’s the nature of trading.

The price made a new ATH above the December $5.496 highs. I don’t know how much higher this could go. I will be monitoring the COT positioning to see when this will get overbought.

I am still monitoring the coffee chart. Price is still in what I see as a bull flag. I think this is a very interesting chart, as breaking above the bull flag would trigger a long trade, while breaking below would trigger a short trade. The potential upside for the long and downside for the short are both huge. You can rarely find opportunities like this one.

A crisis has being unfolded in Japan bonds that affects the global bond markets. It is not clear when and where this will end. The only sure thing, is this causes uncertainty and huge moves in the Forex markets. This situation has postponed the USD strength we observed recently.

I play this with a CHF long for three reasons:

Still no interest in US stock indices. I am still monitoring DAX and would try a long if the blue trend line breaks to the upside, with invalidation being the loss of the previous swing high at $24,891.