Market Overview - December 2019

Relative Returns

The end of November 2019 showed hope that we might be in for an exciting month of December, which wasn’t wrong but perhaps turned out to be exciting in a different way than initially thought. Bulls regained some comfort towards the end of November and entered December with the same mentality. Unfortunately they were immediately shut down by the Bears, who within the first day regained the upper hand and drove prices further down, continuing the trend we have seen throughout the majority of November. In the last report, the hope of a Crypto market that could go against the idea of a deflationary December was present, but unfortunately that was not necessarily the case.

Prices dropped quickly towards the middle of the month with market participants likely realizing that the holiday season is coming up much faster than expected and some of the crypto holdings had to make way for gifts for family and loved ones. Around December 17th most prices bottomed out, and what followed was a small holiday miracle. For (almost) the whole week leading up to Christmas, prices climbed, and most coins covered the loss incurred by the sharp drop a week prior; comforting the majority of the Crypto community into having an enjoyable holiday period without worry of markets falling off a cliff. Most projects were able to hold the holiday levels until the end of the month, with BTC_USDT finishing the month as the “strongest” coin in the analysis with a net change of almost zero. XLM_USDT performed the worst with a net loss of just over 20%.

It is interesting to note that the drop in prices during December 17th splits the graph in two sections. Looking at the left side, prices moved mostly in tandem and overall relative gains exhibited very similar behaviours. After the price drop around December 17th, the relative gains spread out and only four pairs remained in a similarly tight range. This could explain why most correlation coefficients have dropped overall when compared to last month's readings.

December 2019, Biggest Changes

10-Hour Rolling Volatility