Global risk appetite stayed fragile on Wednesday as Trump’s Greenland push and Davos speech kept equities soft, pushed gold to fresh records, and put Bitcoin under pressure while bond markets tried to steady after a brutal sell-off.
Crypto
The total crypto market cap has slipped to about $3.01 trillion, down a little over 2% on the day, with the Fear & Greed Index at 32 (“fear”), the Altcoin Season Index at 27/100, signaling a Bitcoin-leaning market despite risk aversion, and the average crypto RSI near 39, pointing to broadly oversold conditions.
Bitcoin trades around $89,000, down about 2.4% on the day and more than 6% over the week. Ethereum trades near $2,970, down roughly 7% on the day, while Solana lags badly near $127 with a weekly loss of 12%.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs swung back to net outflows on Jan. 20, as 5,200 BTC (roughly $460 million) were redeemed across products, with IBIT alone seeing an outflow of about 615 BTC, or close to $55 million.
Commodities
Gold surged another 2% to roughly $4,860 an ounce after briefly touching a record near $4,888, its 11th all-time high of 2026, as investors hedge against a possible trade war and rising concern over Fed independence.
Silver hovered just above $95, close to its new ATH, while oil moved the other way, with Brent hovering below $64, down around 1.5%, as expectations of a U.S. inventory build and slower global growth outweighed a temporary outage at Kazakh fields and headline risk around Greenland.
Stock Market Indices
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 fell 2.06% to 6,796.87, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 1.76% to 48,488.59, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite dropped 2.39% to 22,954.32.
In Europe, the STOXX 600 extended its losing streak, while London’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.12% to 10,113.8 as tariff fears hit defense, pharma, and tech.
In Asia, the Nikkei 225 futures fell 0.57% to 52,530, echoing the global sell-off but easing slightly as renewed JGB buying cooled the recent yield spike.
Geopolitics & Market Sentiment
On the diplomatic front, Trump’s insistence that there is “no going back” on acquiring Greenland and his refusal to rule out force have pushed the EU into an emergency summit and revived talk of a “Sell America” trade that targets U.S. stocks, bonds, and the dollar.
On the economic front, Britain and China are trying to revive a “golden era” business dialogue ahead of Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s potential Beijing trip, offering a counterpoint to the Greenland drama, as Reuters reported.
