Ukraine, Western Countries Meet For Downgraded Talks On Russian War

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied above $93,000, leading to large-scale liquidation of the recently built short positions. For the last 24-hour period, BTC saw over $300M in short liquidations.

Bitcoin (BTC) rallied above $93,000, leading to a liquidation of $300M in short positions. Before the recent price recovery, BTC quickly rebuilt derivative positions, heavily skewed toward short bets. The additional short positions appeared after the low-activity Easter weekend, dominating the available long liquidity.

The recent BTC liquidations were the biggest since March 3, coinciding with the overall recovery following the correction in April. Long liquidations are still happening, but are a fraction of the recent short liquidations.

Bitcoin switches to greedy trading

The move to a higher price range signaled an attack against the more bearish sentiment for BTC. Despite the significant bets that BTC would slide, the market chose to attack the short positions first. After the recent liquidations, BTC has accrued more significant long positions in the $87,000-$89,000 range, with the potential for another price dip to those levels. However, the rapid short liquidations set up expectations that BTC would rally to $100,000 in an extended recovery.

The BTC market sentiment switched within days, driven by the tidal change of derivative markets. The Bitcoin fear and greed index shifted from weeks of fearful sentiment into ‘greed’ territory, rising from 29 to 72 points in the past week. BTC traded at $93,936.38 on Tuesday, riding on the momentum from the start of the new week.

The BTC rally also led to a recovery of altcoins, though the leading coin still had a dominance of 61.2%. The recent BTC rally signals the market is ready to rebound, despite the recent pressure of US tariff negotiations.

Bybit saw the largest liquidations

For April 22, BTC short liquidations reached over $517M, in the higher range for the past few months.

BTC liquidations led to a tidal shift on the market, opening the opportunity for a rally above $93,000.

The liquidations were led by positions on Binance, followed by Bybit. As of April 23, almost all short positions have been attacked and either closed or liquidated. The remaining short positions lead up to the $97,000 range, but at a smaller scale.

BTC open interest continues to recover, gaining another $2B in the past day to over $28 B. The leading coin is still the object of interest for ETF, and long-term whales are buying up the available supply. Increased corporate treasury buying also boosts BTC sentiment. ETF inflows responded quickly to the renewed market sentiment. On-chain data show the ETF inflows had the most successful day since US President Donald Trump took office. In the past day, ETF bought up $912.7M worth of BTC.

BTC is yet to cross above $95,000 and establish a new range. The recent activity is also seen as a potential short-term ‘hate rally’, aiming to liquidate short positions, and it may take a few days to show if the price move was sustainable.

Derivative markets remain more influential, capable of swaying the price in the short term despite the ongoing whale accumulation on spot and OTC markets. BTC exchange reserves are still at an all-time low of 2.5M coins, but the ability to bet on price moves does not depend on the actual supply of freely available BTC.

Source: CryptoSlate

(April 23): Private-sector activity in the euro area barely grew in April as tariff uncertainty sent confidence in the services industry to an almost five-year low.

The Composite Purchasing Managers’ Index by S&P Global fell to 50.1 from 50.9 in March, remaining narrowly above the 50 threshold separating expansion from contraction, data Wednesday showed. Analysts had predicted a drop to 50.2.

The deterioration was largely down to Germany, whose own main PMI gauge unexpectedly declined to less than 50 for the first time in four months. France also missed analyst estimates, remaining stuck beneath that level. Both of Europe’s two biggest economies saw surprise weakness in services.

“This has pushed the whole economy into stagnation territory,” Cyrus de la Rubia, an economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank, said in a statement. “A faster drop in new business suggests this weakness might stick around for a while. However, the higher fiscal spending on infrastructure in Germany and defence spending across Europe should eventually benefit not just manufacturing but also the service sector, though with a bit of a lag.”

Optimism over higher public spending, particularly in Germany, has given way to fears that President Donald Trump’s tariffs will erase the already meagre growth analysts had been predicting for the region’s economy this year.

Projections published Tuesday by the International Monetary Fund painted a gloomier picture for Europe, downgrading expansion in the euro zone’s 20-nation economy to just 0.8% this year from 1% before. For Germany, the revision was even steeper, with the Washington-based lender now foreseeing an unprecedented third straight year without growth.

Concerns about the economy’s prospects were clear when the European Central Bank met last week and cut interest rates for the seventh time since June 2024, having only weeks ago been considering a pause. Investors reckon it will have to take further action to protect growth and ensure inflation doesn’t drop below 2%, pricing two or three more moves.

Consumer-price growth currently appears to be heading back to 2%, with President Christine Lagarde saying Tuesday that the ECB’s task of returning inflation to that level is “nearing completion”.

Policymakers are getting “some mild support” for their rate-cutting stance from price indicators in the closely watched services sector, according to de la Rubia.

“Costs have risen at a similar rate to March, but the increase in selling prices has slowed significantly,” he said. “Goods prices are showing mixed behaviour: input prices have reversed their inflationary trend of the past four months and have fallen, while output prices have increased a bit more than in March but still modestly.”

PMIs are closely watched by markets as they arrive early in the month and are good at revealing trends and turning points in an economy. A measure of breadth of changes in output rather than depth, business surveys can sometimes be difficult to map directly to quarterly GDP.

Elsewhere, the UK and US composite PMIs are also expected to dip while remaining above the 50 mark.

Source: Theedgemarkets

British companies buckled in April under the strain of an escalating global trade war that threatens to tip the economy into a new downturn, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The S&P Global Composite Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI), a gauge of the private sector economy, slid to 48.2 in April from 51.5 in March.

This marked the lowest reading since November 2022 when businesses were wracked by surging energy costs and financial market turmoil after former Prime Minister Liz Truss' poorly received budget plans.

Readings below 50 denote a contraction in business activity.

Export orders fell at the fastest pace since the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, while costs faced by businesses grew at the fastest rate in more than two years as higher employment taxes and an increased minimum wage kicked in.

Despite the inflationary warning signal, the sharp drop in business activity is likely to further cement expectations that the Bank of England will cut interest rates next month - something that had looked uncertain a few weeks ago.

Britain's economy defied expectations in February by growing 0.5%, according to official data published earlier this month.

Wednesday's PMI suggested the economy is now contracting at a quarterly pace of around 0.3%, S&P Global Chief Business Economist Chris Williamson said.

Although Britain hopes it will emerge with a relatively low tariff rate on goods sent to the United States compared with competing economies, Brexit has already weakened exporters and weaker global growth is likely to hurt their prospects further.

"The collapse in confidence and drop in output during April raise red flags as to the near-term economic outlook and add pressure on the Bank of England to reduce interest rates again at its May meeting," Williamson said.

Financial markets on Tuesday fully priced in a BoE rate cut at its May 8 announcement.

Williamson said the global outlook was the biggest concern for British companies but they had also faced sharply higher staffing costs in April due to employment tax rises and a nearly 7% rise in the minimum wage.

"There will be some uncertainty as to whether the recent upturn in price pressures could become entrenched or whether it merely represents a short-term tax-related spike which should be 'looked through'," Williamson said.

The PMI for the services sector fell to 48.9 from 52.5, dropping from a seven-month high in March to a 27-month low this month.

The manufacturing sector, already struggling, fared even worse in April as its PMI fell to 44.0 from 44.9 in March, a 20-month low. New manufacturing export orders collapsed at a rate surpassed only three times in monthly PMI surveys dating back to 1996.

Source: Reuters

Russia’s oil exports rose for the first time in four weeks, with flows from key ports climbing to multi-week highs.

Crude flows from all Russian ports in the four weeks to April 20 rebounded to 3.21 million barrels a day, recovering about one-quarter of the losses seen over the previous three weeks. Flows remain about 240,000 barrels a day, or 7%, below the recent peak seen a month ago.

The increase was driven by higher shipments from key ports — Kozmino in the Pacific and Primorsk in the Baltic. The number of tankers hauling ESPO crude from Kozmino was the highest in five weeks, while departures from Primorsk were the most in three weeks.

The uptick comes as US officials signal they are losing patience with the pace of peacemaking in Ukraine, raising concerns that the administration will abandon sanctions, including those targeting Russia’s oil exports.

The White House has signaled that it’s comfortable with almost all Russia’s demands in Ukraine. These include recognition of the territories it has seized from Ukraine since 2014, the easing of sanctions, a suspension of arms deliveries to Kyiv and a block on the country’s path to NATO membership.

Both President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested on Friday that the administration is prepared to move on from its peace-brokering efforts unless progress is made quickly. US officials are due to meet with Ukrainian and European representatives to discuss US proposals to end the war.

The US has already scaled back its sanctions enforcement. In February, Trump shut down the KleptoCapture task force, a team formed shortly after Moscow’s 2022 invasion of its neighbor to implement measures imposed on Russia.

A total of 31 tankers loaded 23.45 million barrels of Russian crude in the week to April 20, vessel-tracking data and port-agent reports show. The volume was up from 21.93 million barrels on 29 ships the previous week.

Crude flows in the seven days to April 20 stood at about 3.35 million barrels a day, a week-on-week increase of about 220,000 barrels a day.

The less volatile four-week average flows were also up, rising for the first time in four weeks to about 3.21 million barrels a day from 3.13 million a day in the period to April 13.

There were two shipments of Kazakhstan’s KEBCO crude during the week from Novorossiysk.

The gross value of Moscow’s exports recovered about two-thirds of the previous week’s drop, rising by about $130 million, or 12%, to $1.28 billion in the week to April 20, reflecting increases in both weekly average prices and shipments.

Export prices of Russian Urals crude from the Baltic rose by about $2.30 a barrel, while cargoes loading in the Black Sea were up by about $1.80 a barrel. The price of key Pacific grade ESPO increased by about $2.40. Delivered prices in India were about $2 higher, all according to numbers from Argus Media.

On a four-week average basis, income was little changed in the period to April 20, edging higher to about $1.3 billion a week from $1.29 billion in the period to April 13. Using this measure, higher flows were almost completely offset by lower prices.

Observed shipments to Russia’s Asian customers, including those showing no final destination, rose to 2.92 million barrels a day in the four weeks to April 20.

The figures include about 410,000 barrels a day on ships from Western ports showing their destination as Port Said or the Suez Canal, or those from Pacific ports with no clear delivery point. They’re also boosted by another 50,000 barrels a day on vessels yet to show any destination.

Flows to Turkey in the four weeks to April 20 averaged about 290,000 barrels a day, up by about 50,000 barrels a day from the revised figure for the previous week and the highest since the period ending Feb. 9.

This story forms part of a weekly series tracking shipments of crude from Russian export terminals and the gross value of those flows. The next update will be on Tuesday, April 29.

All figures exclude cargoes identified as Kazakhstan’s KEBCO grade. Those are shipments made by KazTransoil JSC that transit Russia for export through Novorossiysk and Ust-Luga and are not subject to European Union sanctions or a price cap. The Kazakh barrels are blended with crude of Russian origin to create a uniform export stream. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Kazakhstan has rebranded its cargoes to distinguish them from those shipped by Russian companies.

Bloomberg classifies ship-to-ship transfers as clandestine if automated position signals appear to be switched off or falsified — a tactic known as spoofing — to hide the two vessels involved coming together to make the cargo switch.

Vessel-tracking data are cross-checked against port-agent reports as well as flows and ship movements reported by other information providers including Kpler and Vortexa Ltd.

If you are reading this story on the Bloomberg terminal, click for a link to a PDF file of four-week average flows from Russia to key destinations.

Source: Bloomberg Europe