Bitcoin Sentiment is Dire
With a decline of more than 30%, Bitcoin (using the IBIT ETF as a proxy) was the worst performing asset class in the first half of 2026.
You’d be hard pressed to find a more depressing price chart than IBIT:
For awhile leading up to highs last year, Bitcoin was one of the most loved areas of the market for bulls to trade. That sentiment has completely flipped with Bitcoin’s price doing nothing but declining for the last nine months.
Conventional market wisdom says to buy low and sell high, but price action does a funny thing to investor psychology. When prices trend lower and lower, sentiment tends to worsen, and vice versa. This is why sentiment is seen as a contrarian indicator. When investors and traders are universally bullish on price after a big run higher, it’s usually a sign that all the good news is priced in. When those same people are universally bearish after continuous declines, you’re often at or near a low point.
Bitcoin can still go a lot lower, and no one knows what the future holds. But below is a look at where Bitcoin sentiment currently stands.
In our mid-year 2026 investor sentiment survey of Bespoke clients, we asked for their stance on Bitcoin going into the second half of 2026 and beyond.
While bullish sentiment towards stocks was above 60% in our mid-year survey, it was just 13% for Bitcoin! 12% were “moderately bullish,” while just 1% were “strongly bullish.”
At the end of 2025, Bitcoin bullish sentiment was at 35% (still pretty low), so it fell 22 percentage points in the first half of 2026.
On the flip side, neutral sentiment towards Bitcoin jumped from 40% at the end of 2025 up to 47%, while bearish sentiment rose from 25% to 40%.
While just 1% of survey-takers are “strongly bullish” on Bitcoin, 10% are “strongly bearish.”
Given these results, only a small percentage of market participants currently view Bitcoin positively, while a much larger number are very bearish. And this is after Bitcoin has already been cut in half from its highs!
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Early Q3 Trend Reversal
Q3 has so far been the complete opposite of the trend in place in the first half of 2026. Investors and traders have used the first handful of trading days this quarter as an opportunity to sell the year’s big winners and rotate into the year’s losers.
The Nasdaq 100 ETF (QQQ) has been volatile over the last month, with nothing to show for it. Of the 20 trading days since 6/8, 16 have seen QQQ move up or down 1%+, yet its price is exactly flat over this period.
As shown below, QQQ is now at the bottom end of a flag pattern that forms from a series of lower highs and higher lows. Technicians usually look for big moves whenever these flag patterns break.
The Philly SOX semis ETF (SOXX) rallied 111% from April lows through June 22nd. It has since fallen 16% and is now just barely hanging onto its 50-DMA, a level it hasn’t closed below since early April.
Micron (MU) was one of the biggest winners in the semis space in Q2, rallying 277% from the end of March through June 25th. MU has lost nearly a quarter of its value in a little over a week since that 6/25 peak:
Below is a snapshot of the biggest semis in the US run through our Trend Analyzer tool. After trading in overbought or extreme overbought territory for much of Q2, they’re all back in neutral (or oversold) territory now.
Companies related to the data-center buildout have also been crushed over the last week as investors rotate away from AI infrastructure.
In addition to the semis and data-center stocks getting crushed, space-related stocks have also been experiencing gravity. These names skyrocketed in May and June, but they’ve given up nearly all of those gains in a matter of weeks since SpaceX (SPCX) became available to equity-market investors.
As AI infrastructure and other first-half high fliers get sold, we’ve seen rotation into areas of the market that had been struggling. Below are software and digital travel stocks that got slammed at various points in Q1 and Q2. Most are up 5%+ over the last week.
Publicly-traded private equity stocks were down 20%+ across the board in the first half, but they’ve also seen a big bounce out of oversold territory since the start of the third quarter. The PE stocks often move in tandem with software because of their huge exposure to the space. If you think software will continue to rally over the coming months, you should probably be bullish on the alternative asset managers as well.
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Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 7/8/26 – Here We Go Again
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“They’re scum. You know what scum is? They’re scum…As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” – Donald Trump
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Talk about a bad breakup. In the wake of President Trump’s comments regarding Iran and the ratcheting up of military tensions in the region, global equities are reeling. Futures for the S&P 500 are down close to 1%, while the Nasdaq sits on losses of closer to 1.5%. As you’d expect, WTI crude oil is up over 5% to just under $75 per barrel. Even with the risk-off sentiment in the market, Treasury yields are also higher as the 10-year yield moves up 5 bps to 4.57%. Gold is also plunging more than 2% to $4,060 per ounce, going against its usual role as a safe-haven bid, and Bitcoin is down 2.5% to just above $62,000.
It was another day of red for Asia as the Nikkei fell over 2%, and the Kospi tanked another 5.4%. The index has now declined more than 20% from its high just over two weeks ago on 6/22. The only global benchmark in the region trading higher was Hong Kong, which rallied 3% on reports that the Chinese government would limit access from foreigners to the country’s top AI models.
European stocks aren’t faring much better than Asia. The STOXX 600 is down over 1.5%, led lower by Spanish stocks, which are down over 2.5% after President Trump called for an end to all US trade with the country after it refused to ramp up defense spending and denied the US access to its airspace during the US strikes on Iran.
The ‘break-up’ with Iran comes just as oil prices were starting to revert to their pre-war levels. After surging more than 68%, WTI crude oil prices closed within $2 of the pre-war levels on Monday but have since rallied more than 10%.
This morning, oil prices are up over 5%, and the Crude Oil ETF (USO) is on pace to gap up over 3%. Along with the rally in crude oil, equity prices are predictably on pace to gap down nearly 1%. As mentioned above, though, Treasuries are unexpectedly selling off. Since the launch of USO in 2006, today will only be the 14th day that USO gapped up at least 2.5%, the S&P 500 (SPY) gapped down at least 0.5%, and long-term Treasuries (TLT) gapped down.
The chart below shows each of those prior days on a chart of SPY. Stunningly, there wasn’t a single occurrence in the first ten years after USO’s launch, and then after the first occurrence in 2016, there wasn’t another for more than five years. Since the start of 2025, though, these types of mornings for the market have been increasingly common, and today’s open will be the ninth occurrence in the last four months!
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The Closer – Weighting, Expectations, Logistics Looking Up – 7/7/26
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- The US goods imports composition has shifted to a shocking degree over the last two and a half years as imports of semiconductors, computers, and accessories have more than tripled.
- One year consumer inflation expectations have risen to their highest level since September 2023, despite big drops in categories like food and gas.
- Logistic managers have reported robust industry conditions in part due to prices rising at some of the fastest paces on record.
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Daily Sector Snapshot — 7/7/26
Chart of the Day – Economic Momentum
Bespoke’s Morning Lineup – 7/7/26 – Taking it to the Bank
See what’s driving market performance around the world in today’s Morning Lineup. Bespoke’s Morning Lineup is the best way to start your trading day. Read it now by starting a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium. CLICK HERE to learn more and start your trial.
“You win a few, you lose a few. Some get rained out. But you got to dress for all of them.” – Satchel Paige
Below is a snippet of commentary from today’s Morning Lineup. Start a two-week trial to Bespoke Premium to view the full report.
Paul Hickey will be appearing on CNBC’s The Exchange today between 1 PM and 1:30 PM. Check it out if you’re near a screen!
It looks like a terrible Tuesday for the market as Nasdaq futures fall more than 1%, while the S&P 500 faces a more modest loss of 0.23%, and futures on the Dow are modestly higher. Despite the weakness in equities, Treasury yields are slightly higher, with the 10-year hitting 4.5%.
Crude oil is modestly higher after reports that Iran fired munitions at a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz. That raises levels of uncertainty for the region, but with WTI prices not even able to muster a 1% gain, markets don’t seem overly concerned. The fact that gold prices and Bitcoin are also lower by less than 1% also supports that idea.
The weakness in US futures traces back to weakness overnight in Asia, where the Nikkei fell over 2%, and South Korea’s Kospi plunged nearly 5%. The weakness in South Korea was tied to memory stocks, which plunged as Samsung declined close to 10% after the company said earnings wouldn’t be quite as stellar as previously thought.
In Europe, stocks are holding up much better. The STOXX 600 is down just 0.2% as world leaders meet for a NATO Summit. German stocks are the biggest laggards, falling more than 0.7% even as May Industrial Production rose 0.9%, versus expectations for an increase of 0.1%. Outside of Germany, most other major benchmarks in the region are modestly higher.
As tech stocks struggle to kick off Q3, Financials have picked up some of the slack. Over the last five trading days (dating back to the start of last week), the sector is up close to 5%. That makes it the top-performing sector, with a rally of a full percentage point higher than the next closest sector (Communication Services), and more than 1.5 percentage points ahead of Consumer Discretionary. As a result of the rally, the sector is more overbought than any other, as it closed more than three standard deviations above its 50-DMA yesterday.
With the rally over the last few days, the Financials sector is back more than three standard deviations above its 50-day moving average, a level it reached back in early June. For more on how the sector has historically performed after reaching such extreme short-term overbought levels, see our Chart of the Day from June 17th (Chart of the Day – Cyclical Surge)
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The Closer – Record Crack Spread, Sentiment Surge, Housing – 7/6/26
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- As crude prices remain in the $60 range and gasoline prices stay stubbornly high, crack spreads have widened out to record levels.
- The Schwab Trading Activity Index readings a multi-year high in June despite the S&P 500 small pullback during the month.
- Housing inventories continued to grow in June although the median listing price is down to the lowest level since April 2022.
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