JakeO

With central bank independence now a live political/legal battle, every print - especially inflation, becomes a test of whether the Fed can actually respond to the data.
Hot inflation + compromised Fed = unanchored expectations.
Median Estimates for today:
Headline: 2.7%
Core: 2.7%
Trump + the DOJ have made CPI prints great again.

It's worth getting familiar with the CLARITY Act as I expect it becomes an important narrative early Q1.
The bill passed the House in July but stalled in the Senate. Sacks confirmed a Jan markup is coming, but three issues remain unresolved: DeFi treatment, stablecoin yield, and Trump family ethics provisions.
Consensus is that April is the last realistic deadline for a Senate floor vote (before midterm politics take over) and for that to happen - the markup needs to be agreed by the SEC + CFTC by the end of Jan. This likely gets politicised so expect headlines throughout the month as things p

EDIT with momentum also
BTC's correlation with NASDAQ 100 more than doubled in 2025 (0.52 vs 0.23 in 2024). The asset class is maturing. Ignore this at your own risk. -

Powell's term ends May 15, 2026, but Bessent already floated the "shadow Fed chair" concept last year: announce early, make Powell a lame duck and let forward guidance work it's way through rates.
The announcement is expected this month (91% priced before Jan 30th) with Warsh + Hassett neck and neck.

Perps have undeniably found such strong PMF that they're directly impacting traditional markets.
This is a great discussion on what it takes to roll out these products on RWA's - worth a listen for anyone interested in micro structure challenges. Kudos @choffstein

Rollover trades have been dominating post-expiry volume in a very slow market.
Signal to noise here is trash and will be until liquidity normalises. Avoid over-indexing flow data right now: 99.9% is noise.
Happy NYE!

FWIW, I don't think tax-loss harvesting has been a major driver of PA in alts. Yes, there are plenty of harvestable losses in majors/assets with ETF wrappers, but U.S. tax law doesn't yet apply the standard IRS wash sale rule (the 30-day repurchase limit) to Crypto directly.
Therefore TLH is essentially a round-trip trade: coins sold to realise loss, then re-bought in the same session. Assuming OBs are balanced the result is market neutral.

The OCC letter from early-Dec has been re-circulating the last few days and allows banks to engage in "riskless principal" Crypto trades.
This flow differs from a prop desk. In plain English: a bank buys Crypto from Customer A and immediately offsets the position to an LP. The bank technically takes legal ownership for a split second (long enough to complete both legs of the trade) but never holds inventory or assumes price risk.
This is ultimately a broker model - economically they match buyers and sellers but cannot warehouse positions or run a prop book.

Hard to imagine fireworks this week - most institutional desks will remain quiet until Jan 1st where traders will start the year with a clean slate with plenty of catalysts to focus on. 2026 opens with:
- Fed Chair Announcement (Exp)
- Supreme Court Tariff Ruling (Exp)
- Clarity Act Mark-up (Exp)
- SLR requirements updated
- MSCI Crypto Stock Index Decision (15th)
- FOMC Meeting (28th)
- Government funding deadline (30th)
All this following tax-loss selling (narrative!), large OPEX and short sided positioning.

There's been plenty of focus on today's $27B OPEX as if it's a catalyst for spot, but pre-expiry flows have been orderly all week, with rolls already shifting into 2026.
As with all these events, it's better viewed as a positioning reset & i'd rather focus on next year's positioning/shape of the surface to guide expectations.

Say what you will about 2025, but the institutional shift has been undeniable... BlackRock now makes more from IBIT than any of its other 1,400 ETFs.

Markets are definitely in holiday mode here with order books running below normal depth. Expect erratic flow as discretionary desks are notably absent & funds with Dec 31 NAV deadlines adjust weights into thin books.