Today · Friday 18 September, 07:45 BST
Markets are confident today.
Crypto and shares are both up, and most parts of the market are joining in.
Where the market sits today
Five of the six things we watch agree today. The odd one out is investor nervousness, measured by , which is rising when it would normally fall on a day like this.
Tap each tile to see what it measures and why it matters.
“Agrees” means a reading points the same way as most of the others. It describes today, not tomorrow.
Look closer Which parts of the market moved, and the crypto mood
Where the market moved
The eleven parts of the US market, and which way each went today.
- Energy+2.40%
- Technology+1.80%
- Media and telecoms+1.20%
- Shops, cars and leisure+0.90%
- Household staples+0.60%
- Industry+0.30%
- Banks and insurers+0.20%
- Healthcare−0.30%
- Utilities−0.50%
- Materials and mining−1.10%
- Property−1.60%
The crypto mood
Up 11 since yesterday.
A daily score from 0 to 100 of how fearful or greedy crypto traders are, published by Alternative.me. It makes up three tenths of the crypto reading.
The five largest coins
Ranked by total value alone, never chosen by us. Prices in US dollars. Data provided by CoinGecko.
The last two weeks
Each bar is one day’s position on the scale. Taller is more confident.
The Jacqueline Read
The story of the week was the gap between what markets did and how people felt about it. Prices climbed steadily, and nervousness climbed with them, which is not the usual pairing. I have seen that resolve both ways before, so I am not reading it as a warning. I am reading it as something unfinished.
What I’m watching this week
Whether nervousness settles back towards where it started the month, and whether shares can keep rising without crypto coming along. That second one would be the first real break in the pattern that has held since August.
Coming up this week
How this is worked out The method, the weights and where the numbers come from
How this is worked out
Six readings are taken every day and combined into one position on the scale above. They do not count equally. Crypto carries the most weight because this is a crypto-led read, and gold is left out entirely on the days it moves the same way as the dollar, because that makes the reason for its move unclear.
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Take 2 mins to learn more The risks the FCA wants you to know about before investing in cryptoassets
1. You could lose all the money you invest
Prices can fall as fast as they rise, and the market is largely unregulated, so money can also be lost to cyber-attacks, crime, or a firm failing.
2. You should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong
The Financial Services Compensation Scheme does not cover this, and the Financial Ombudsman Service cannot look at most complaints about it.
3. You may not be able to sell when you want to
There is no guarantee a buyer is there when you want one, and outages or firm failures can hold a sale up.
4. Cryptoasset investments can be complex
They are hard to understand, which makes the risks hard to judge. Do your own research first.
5. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket
Spreading money across different investments makes you less dependent on any one of them. A common rule of thumb is to keep high-risk investments under 10% of your money.
These five headings are the Financial Conduct Authority’s, from its prescribed risk summary for qualifying cryptoassets. The explanations are ours, in plain English. The authoritative version is COBS 4 Annex 1R.
