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“Age doesn’t matter, unless you’re cheese.” – John Paul Getty

There’s not a lot of economic or earnings data to speak of this morning, but that hasn’t stopped traders from selling.  Equity futures are down sharply this morning with tech leading the way lower.  Nowhere is the severity of today’s weakness more pronounced than in the crypto markets.

Read today’s Morning Lineup for a recap of all the major market news and events including a recap of overnight economic and earnings data, a graphical summary of the current decline in bitcoin, as well as the latest US and international COVID trends including our vaccination trackers, and much more.

It’s looking like an especially painful day in the cryptocurrency markets today.  While the sector has been under pressure for the last couple of weeks now, reports overnight regarding a crackdown by Chinese authorities have given traders another excuse to sell.  While bitcoin is down over 10% this morning, other more speculative areas of the sector are down far more.

In the case of bitcoin, today’s decline takes the drawdown from its recent record highs to just over 40%.  That’s steep no matter how you look at it, but would you believe that over the last ten years, bitcoin’s average drawdown from a record high on any given day is close to 50%, and on 69% of all trading days during this span bitcoin has been down more than 40% from its record high?  One caveat here, though, is that while bitcoin isn’t even trading at its ‘average’ drawdown levels, given the market value, the amount of money ‘lost’ during this sell-off has been much steeper than any prior pullback.  Make sure to check out page six of our Morning Lineup for additional charts summarizing the decline.