Wild Tuesday In Stocks & Crypto

Cryptocurrencies had a disastrous crash on Tuesday as most were down over 20% and some were down over 40%. The total market capitalization peaked at $830 billion two weeks ago. The latest check is $496 billion which is an over 40% decline. This is great news for the economy and for stocks because the size of the bubble didn’t get large enough for a crash to cause a negative impact. There’s nothing that indicates stocks were hurt by this decline. There will probably be a minor boost in Q4 millennial consumer spending and a minor decline in Q1, but nothing notable. The price of bitcoin has done almost nothing but decline since I said $19,300 might have been the ultimate top. The latest price is $10,400 which means it has fallen over 45%.

The movement in stocks wasn’t nearly as severe as the movement in cryptos, but it was still a wild ride. Stocks initially were up, but then they fell because of the fear of a government shutdown. The Dow had a 283 gain wiped away as it fell 10.33 points. This was the biggest swing since February 10th, 2016. The S&P 500 was down 0.4% and the Russell 2000 was down 1.19%.

Government Shutdown Looms

Congress needs to pass a spending bill by Friday to prevent a government shutdown. The situation is a mess because there are so many different issues in play. The most important issue is probably DACA which is the deferred action for childhood arrivals program. The Democrats want a solution which means some sort of extension while Trump said he’d end it in March. Another issue is one we discussed when the last stopgap budget was passed in December. The defense hawks want the defense spending to increase while Democrats want non-defense and defense spending to increase equally. The other aspects in play are CHIP, which is the children’s health insurance program, and hurricane disaster relief aid. The disaster relief spending was a catalyst for the last continuing resolution to be passed because the situation was dire.