Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin's a Pretty Good Guide to Animal Spirits in Stocks

  • Cryptocurrency bounced off 200-day average before S&P 500 did
  • ‘Bitcoin is worth watching,’ Morgan Stanley analysts say

Bitcoin: What’s Coming in the Year Ahead

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Bitcoin may not cut it as a currency in Mark Carney’s eyes, but it has at least one other use: it’s a pretty good measure of animal spirits.

There’s a remarkable similarity in chart movements of the digital token and the forward price to earnings ratio of stocks in the S&P 500 Index. The valuation measure peaked on the very same day as the cryptocurrency back in December, and hit a low days after Bitcoin bottomed out.