The market is weighing inflation pressures against expectations for interest rate cuts, with the US stock and cryptocurrency markets continuing to fluctuate

News on January 9th, the market is weighing inflationary pressures and expectations for interest rate cuts. U.S. stocks were volatile throughout Wednesday, with slight gains in the SP Dow Jones Indices and a minor decline in Nasdaq. Large tech stocks showed mixed performance; Tesla closed up by 0.15%, while Nvidia turned from gain to loss. Cryptocurrency concept stocks Coinbase and MicroStrategy saw their stock prices fall by 1.6% and 2.85% respectively.

The cryptocurrency market took another plunge at midnight, with Bitcoin briefly dropping to a new low of $92,500 this year and Ethereum barely holding onto $3,200 until conditions improved slightly in the morning as prices slowly rose again. At the time of writing, Bitcoin was reported at $94,454 USD with a decrease of 2.75% over the past 24 hours while Ethereum appeared stronger at $3,334 USD after falling by only 1.81%. During these two days when most markets fell broadly, DeFai concept coins (DeFi+AI Agent) bucked the trend with noticeable capital inflows.

In terms of major foreign exchange currencies: The US dollar index has risen for two consecutive days; The pound fell by 0.9%, hitting its lowest level since April last year; The yen dropped to nearly half-year lows; A strong dollar put pressure on international oil prices which fell more than 1%; Employment data came out lower than expected pushing spot gold up about 0.5% reaching near four-week highs.

Minutes from December's Federal Reserve meeting show that almost all participants are concerned about rising inflation risks as well as potential impacts from Trump's tariff plan indicating that Fed is already or close to slowing down its easing pace.The market expects rates will remain unchanged at this month-end meeting but anticipates first rate cut could happen in June.