Bitcoin has seen its price jump by more than 11 per cent in the past 24 hours — setting a new high for the year, and the highest price since August.
The digital asset is up a whopping 11.22 per cent — hitting a value of $US24,600 per coin — as of 12.30pm Sydney time and other well-known cryptocurrencies are following its lead.
Ether is up 9 per cent, Dogecoin is up 7.87 per cent and Shiba Inu is up 7.9 per cent over the same period.
The crypto market appears to be following a rebound in the stock market — particularly in the tech sector — in recent weeks.
There is still however a lot of lost ground from early last year, when Bitcoin hit a high of $47,451 — meaning its value has dropped more than 40 per cent since then.
The long-term trend is better for the biggest digital asset as it has increased in value by a massive 147 per cent in the past three years.
The traditional markets, likewise, saw prices climbing higher over the past 24 hours as the latest economic data from the USA showed strong consumer spending and an increase in inflation across January, which caused some to re-evaluate the outlook for continued interest rate hikes.
After climbing out of negative territory, the S&P, Dow and Nasdaq all closed the day in the green, up 0.28 per cent, 0.11 per cent, and 0.92 per cent, respectively.
In Australia meanwhile the top 200 companies on the ASX are trading 0.9 per cent higher as of 12.45pm on Thursday.
This follows a rough for Aussie stocks yesterday as the nation’s biggest bank — Commonwealth — saw its share price sink by five per cent.
The market is performing better today despite the Australian unemployment rate rising to 3.7 per cent.
It was revealed the Australian economy has shed 11,500 jobs but Australians hoping the Reserve Bank might ease off on raising interest rates are likely to be disappointed.
The nation’s official unemployment rate jumped unexpectedly to 3.7 per cent in January, according to data released on Thursday by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Economists were widely tipping the unemployment rate to hold steady at the 3.5 per cent recorded in December and some 20,000 jobs to be added to the market.
But there were more people out of work in January than usual.
ABS head of labour statistics Bjorn Jarvis said the number of people in jobs fell by more than 11,000 and the number of unemployed people increased by about 22,000, lifting the jobless rate by 0.2 per cent.
“This was the second consecutive monthly fall in seasonally adjusted employment but followed very strong growth during 2022,” he said.
However, Mr Jarvis noted January was the most seasonal time of the year in the Australian labour market, with people leaving jobs but also getting ready to start new jobs or return from leave.
“This January, we saw more people than usual with a job indicating they were starting or returning to work later in the month,” he said.
This means economists, who are still anticipating more interest rate hikes, will be expecting February’s jobs data to be at least slightly stronger.
BIS Oxford Economics head of macroeconomic forecasting Sean Langcake said the RBA would looking for signs that the labour market is cooling and taking some of the pressure off wage growth.
“Today’s print does not provide any conclusive evidence of this,” he said.
“But it is clear the market is tracking sideways, albeit in a very tight position.”
ANZ senior economist Catherine Birch said she still expecting another two interest rate rises in the next few months.
“Looking at some of the other data that has come through, household spending still looks pretty resilient during this time,” she told ABC News.
“We know from RBA Governor Philip Lowe‘s appearance in front of the Senate economics legislation committee yesterday, their real focus is on inflation. Inflation is too high and very broadbased.”
— with NCA NewsWire
Story Credit: news.com.au