Month: January 2021

In a not entirely surprising decision, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to expedite election appeals filed by President Donald Trump (including Lin Wood’s suit) to overturn President-elect Joe Biden’s victories in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

This does not mean the cases are dismissed but the justices won’t consider them until later this winter; and, as @steve_vladeck pointed out, they should all be moot by that point, though the justices can always find a way to rule.

Without comment, #SCOTUS denies the pending motions to expedite in eight pending election-related disputes. This means it will consider the requests that it take up the cases on their regular schedule (by which point they’ll be practically, if not formally, moot).

— Steve Vladeck (@steve_vladeck) January 11, 2021

 

The self-driving EV race is officially on. And as competition begins to pop up globally, joint ventures and partnerships are being struck almost daily as players from tech and legacy automotive rush to pair together in order to get products to the market as quickly as possible.

The latest tie-up comes from Chinese EV manufacturer NIO, who announced it was partnering with chipmaker NVIDIA this weekend to “develop a new generation of automated driving electric vehicles”.

“NIO, a pioneer in China’s premium smart electric vehicle market, and NVIDIA announced today that the automaker has selected the NVIDIA DRIVE Orin™ system-on-a-chip (SoC) for its new generation of electric vehicles, which will offer advanced automated driving capabilities,” a company release on Saturday said.

It continued: “NIO is working to make consumer adoption of smart, performance-packed electric vehicles a widespread reality. At NIO Day, the company’s annual customer event, the EV maker revealed its NVIDIA DRIVE Orin-powered supercomputer, dubbed Adam, which will first appear in the ET7 sedan that will ship in China starting in 2022.

Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, said: “Autonomy and electrification are the key forces transforming the automotive industry. We are delighted to partner with NIO, a leader in the new energy vehicle revolution — leveraging the power of AI to create the software-defined EV fleets of the future.”

William Li, founder, chairman and CEO of NIO, said: “The cooperation of NIO and NVIDIA will accelerate the development of autonomous driving on smart vehicles. NIO’s in-house developed autonomous driving algorithms will be running on four industry-leading NVIDIA Orin processors, delivering an unprecedented 1000+ TOPS in production cars.”

The release continues:

Adam signals a major achievement by NIO in bringing automotive intelligence and autonomous driving to market, safely and reliably. With a centralized, software-defined computing architecture, NIO’s next-generation EVs, like the ET7 sedan, will feature the latest AI-enabled capabilities, which are perpetually upgradable after the point of sale.

NVIDIA Orin is the world’s highest-performance AV and robotics processor. This scalable supercomputer-on-a-chip family delivers an unprecedented 254 trillions of operations per second (TOPS) while also being able to scale down to entry-level ADAS/Level 2 use cases (10 TOPS/5 watts). NIO will feature four high-performance Orin SoCs in each of its EVs to achieve an industry-leading performance of 1,000+ TOPS — delivering the redundancy and diversity necessary for safe autonomous operation.

As the first of NIO’s EVs to feature Orin, the flagship ET7 is a high-performance vehicle that accelerates from zero to 100km in only 3.9 seconds. It also features a new 150kw battery for extended mileage range.

Nio has been one of the many beneficiaries of an EV stock boom that has taken place over the last 18 months. Once seen as barely fighting for survival, with its stock trading at $2.11 less than a year ago, NIO has now ballooned into a $91 billion market cap and a $58 stock price – up about 25x from its lows over the last twelve months alone.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

On Friday Twitter took the decision to permanently suspend President Trump from its platform due to the “risk of further incitement of violence”.  The day before Facebook had already blocked him.  Tech giants have also moved against right-wing social media platform Parler, with Apple and Google removing it from their app stores over the weekend and Amazon withdrawing the cloud service in which it stores its data.  In view of the events on Capitol Hill last week, the actions have brought relief for many.  However, this news has also sparked warnings that the actions of the tech giants cannot make dissenting opinion vanish and that the purge could contribute to a widening of the cultural and political divide in the US. 

For certain there are concerns that the Democrats’ efforts to impeach the President could underscore amongst his supports Trump’s unfounded allegations that the November election was ‘stolen’ from him.  Democrats are expected to introduce a motion to the House of Representatives today calling on Vice-President Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment in order to strip Trump of his office.  If Pence fails to do so, they plan to impeach Trump later in the week.  For Senate Republicans, however, this looks to be a step too far.  While several have publically criticised the President for his role in the last week’s violence in Washington which led to the death of five people, many have indicated that impeachment may not be the best way to hold Trump accountable.  Senator Toomey instead has called for the President to resign and “go away as soon as possible.”

Despite the momentous issues concerning Democracy in the US, the focus of markets is the likelihood of a surge in deficit spending under the Biden Administration.  On Friday the President-elect called for “trillions of dollars” in immediate further fiscal support, which included higher direct payments to individuals.  The statement coincided with an unexpected 140K slump in December non-farm payrolls.  This likely reflected the delay of fresh fiscal stimulus towards the end of last year and the impact on the labour market of the worsening in coronavirus crisis.  Expectations of further stimulus have been supportive of risk appetite of late, though higher bond yields weighed on Asian equities overnight and on US stock futures.  Having closed at a 3 decade high on Friday, the Nikkei 225 was shut today for a Japanese holiday. 

Last week various Fed officials appeared mostly relaxed about the move higher in yields.  Several Fed speakers are scheduled to speak during the course of the coming week which could help develop the market’s collective opinion on whether changes to the fiscal outlook could alter the Fed’s guidance during the course of the year.  Even though a rise in inflation expectations leaves real yields in the US extremely low, higher nominal yields has triggered a wave of profit-taking on short USD positions.  The stronger USD and higher bond yields has also sparked a plunge in Bitcoin and in gold prices this morning.  Oil is also trading lower, though this may in part be the result of further worries about the impact of Covid related restrictions on demand particularly given the news that more than 11 million people in the northern Chinese city of Shijiazhuang have been placed into a stringent lockdown after an outbreak of Covid-19. 

Last week PM Suga placed Tokyo and some surrounding regions in a state of emergency due to the rise in Covid cases.  Today Japan has announced that another mutant strain has been detected in four people who arrived from Brazil.  Millions have already been placed in lockdowns or in various restrictions across Europe and the US, with governments under pressure to accelerate the roll-out of vaccine programmes.  The EU has reportedly secured a deal to double its supply of the Pfizer-BioNtech vaccine after its slow start to its programme.  In the UK, 7 mass vaccination centres are due to open this week as the government attempts to increase its target from 200K jabs a day to 2 mln a week.  

The sharp rise in US Treasury yields has also dented the bullish momentum of EM currencies with losses led by the South African rand followed by another popular EM yielder the Brazilian real. In our view we are witnessing a short-term correction across EM following impressive gains in Q4 rather than a major shift in the underlying bullish trend which remains underpinned by capital inflows into EM assets driven by accommodative monetary and fiscal policies and expectations that major economies will return to normality thanks to coronavirus vaccines. If the rise in US Treasury yields mainly reflected growing market expectations that the Fed may start normalizing its monetary policy much sooner than envisaged only a few months ago, we would be far more concerned about the outlook for EM. It is not, however, the case as the squeeze in US yields can be mainly attributed to the market expecting expansionary fiscal policy under Biden’s presidency. It is also important to stress that the Fed cannot allow financial conditions to tighten too much through rising yields at the time when the US economy is still in the doldrums. At this very early stage of the economic recovery the Fed is likely to prevent Treasury yields from rising to levels that would make EM assets unattractive and resulting in capital inflows to slow down or even being partially reversed. Such a moment is likely to come when the Fed starts withdrawing its unprecedented stimulus, but not yet as this major headwind to EM may not start blowing hard until well into 2022 or even 2023.

Tesla is sinking on Monday despite a new upgrade and a raised price target from Bank of America. The pressure on Tesla stock appears to be due to further evidence that Apple is, in fact, working with Hyundai on electric cars. We had first reported that Apple was elbowing its way into the EV world last Friday.

This morning, rumors of Apple and Hyundai working together got another shot in the arm when it was reported that the two companies would announce a partnership deal in March, according to StreetInsider.com.

The two companies “plan to start production around 2024 in the United States,” the report says. “The first media report that appeared over the weekend in South Korea noted the companies plan to use Kia Motors’ factory in Georgia, or alternatively, build a new factory in the United States.”

It is being reported that the partnership has a goal of producing 100,000 vehicles in 2024. 

Last week, after rumors first swirled about the partnership, Hyundai issued a statement backing away from the report and saying it had been contacted by “a number of potential partners” for EV development on Friday morning. Hyundai instead said last Friday “it received requests for potential cooperation from a number of companies,” according to Bloomberg. 

Last Thursday evening, it was reported that an internal discussion at Hyundai about a partnership with Apple had already been complete and was awaiting the Chairman’s approval. Hyundai and Apple were reported to be working on Apple Car production, self-driving and battery development together. 

Additionally, not one to be outdone by idiocy elsewhere on the sell side, Bank of America was the latest bank to find itself chasing Tesla’s price higher. The bank raised its target on Tesla to a street high $900 on Monday morning, from its previous $500 target. Despite having a street high target, it maintained a “neutral” rating. 

“Our $900 PO is based on 23x EV/Sales and 118x EV/EBITDA on our 2021-2022 estimates and a PEG of 4.1x on capital-induced growth through 2025E,” the note reads. 

The note seemed to simply cite the company’s rising stock price as the upgrade. “TSLA will utilize its stock to raise capital through low-cost equity offerings in order to accelerate aggressive capacity buildout plans globally and drive units/revenue substantially higher,” analyst John Murphy wrote.

While acknowledging in passing that the auto industry is capital intensive, the note called Tesla’s stock price an “upward spiral” and said that “the higher the upward spiral of TSLA’s stock goes, the cheaper capital becomes to fund growth, which is then rewarded by investors with a higher stock price.”

That doesn’t sound ponzi-ish at all – and the worst part: so far, this analysis has actually been correct.

In another week which will likely be dominated by political events as traders follow the second impeachment of Donald Trump, DB’s Jim Reid writes that this week isn’t the busiest in terms of planned events with the data highlights including the US CPI (Wednesday) and retail sales (Friday) data for December, while there’ll also be the release of the ECB’s account of its December meeting (Thursday) and the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book (Friday). Reid expects that the economic highlight will be Biden outlining more details on his new administrations priorities on Thursday. This may give us some clues on the direction of travel for stimulus that he aims to get through Congress.

Here is a visual breakdown of key data, courtesy of BofA:

Of course, there’ll be lots of attention on whether the Democrats try to impeach President Trump with less than 10 days left in office but it will be more of a curiosity than a market moving event. Overnight, the House speaker Pelosi has said that Democratic leaders will move to impeach this week unless VP Mike Pence and the cabinet invoke the 25th Amendment. So a busy few days ahead in the Capitol.

Finally, there are a limited number of earnings releases, ahead of a much busier earnings calendar over the coming weeks: Blackrock (Thursday), JPM, Citigroup and Wells Fargo (Friday) are the highest profile companies kicking things off. The full day by day week ahead is at the end of the piece today.

Below, courtesy of Deutsche Bank, is the day-by-day calendar of events

Monday January 11

• Data: China December CPI, PPI
• Central Banks: Fed’s Bostic, Kaplan and ECB’s Vasle speak

Tuesday January 12

• Data: US December NFIB small business optimism index, November JOLTS job openings
• Central Banks: Fed’s Brainard, Rosengren, Kaplan, and Kashkari speak

Wednesday January 13

• Data: Italy November industrial production, Euro Area November industrial production, US weekly MBA mortgage applications, December CPI, monthly budget statement, Japan November core machine orders (23:50UK time), December PPI (23:50 UK time)
• Central Banks: Federal Reserve releases Beige Book, Fed’s Clarida, Brainard, Harker, and ECB’s Villeroy speak

Thursday January 14

• Data: US weekly initial jobless claims, December import price index, China December trade balance
• Central Banks: ECB releases account of December monetary policy meeting, Fed Chair Powell, Fed’s Rosengren and Bostic speak
• Earnings: BlackRock

Friday January 15

• Data: China December new home prices, Japan November tertiary industry index, UK November GDP, Euro Area November trade balance, US December PPI, retail sales, capacity utilisation, industrial production, January Empire State manufacturing survey, preliminary January University of Michigan sentiment
• Central Banks: Bank of Korea monetary policy decision
• Earnings: JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Citigroup

* * *

Amplify Trading‘s Anthony Cheung has broken down the key events in the week ahead in the following 3-minute primer:

Trump:

Democrats will launch a second attempt to remove Dormld Trump from office on Monday when they introduce articles of impeachment in the House. The Senate won’t reconvene until Jan. 19 and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McCormell said Friday that a trial can’t  begin before then uraess all 100 senators consent to it — an exceedingly unlikely development, as Trump retains allies among Republicans in the chamber.

Reports suggest Trump and a dwindling circle of advisers plan a defiant final week in office, according to people familiar with the matter. Trump is believed to be preparing at least one more round of pardons, and will try a final time to advance his administration’s effort to bring Big Tech to heel, though it isn’t clear what he may do.

What does all this mean for markets, probably not a great deal but politically between an impeachment movement and Trump’s censorship by social media political polarization is not going away anytime soon despite the Blue Wave,

The Biden Plan:

The President elect is due to outline his stimulus plan on Thursday. Biden has guided that the price tag with be “high” and in the “trillions” and is expected to include plans for U5$2,000 stimulus checks, more generous unemployment assistance and enhanced aid to city and state governments.

Lagarde & Powell:

Christine Lagarde’s first public appearances of the year (Mon 8 Weds) may provide clues for investors on the implications for monetary policy. We also get the latest ECB minutes on Thusday. Note, Fed Chair Powell speaks later that day taking part in the Princeton Economics webinar.

Data:

 

In the UK, GDP data for November will give an initial glimpse of the economic damage inflicted by a renewed lockdown that imposed that month to contain the coronavirus. Economists predict a sharp drop of 4.8X, the first contraction in seven months with with weakness concentrated in services activity, as pubs, restaurants, gyms and non-essential shops closed.

 

The US data focus will include CPI inflation (Wed), weekly jobless claims (Thu), retail sales (Fri) and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment (Fri). Retail sales probably fell for a third straight month. The auto and gasoline components likely rose, but spending at bars and restaurants probably plunged, due to COVID restrictions. Inflation is likely to move higher on gasoline price moves but outside of that component, price pressures remain quite benign, according to ING.

* * *

Finally, focusing on just the US, Goldman writes that the key economic data releases this week are the CPI report on Wednesday and the retail sales report on Friday. There are numerous speaking engagements from Fed officials this week, including Vice Chair Clarida on Wednesday and Chair Powell on Thursday.

Monday, January 11

There are no major economic data releases scheduled.

• 12:00 PM Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic (FOMC voter) speaks; Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic will discuss his economic outlook for 2021 in a virtual event hosted by the Rotary Club of Atlanta. Prepared text is not expected. Audience Q&A is expected.
• 06:00 PM Dallas Fed President Kaplan (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan will discuss the economy and monetary policy in a virtual town hall hosted by the Dallas Fed. Moderated Q&A is expected.

Tuesday, January 12

• 06:00 AM NFIB small business optimism, December (consensus 100.3, last 101.4)
• 10:00 AM JOLTS job openings, November (consensus 6,500k, last 6,652k)
• 11:00 AM Boston Fed President Rosengren (FOMC non-voter), Dallas Fed President Kaplan (FOMC non-voter), and Minneapolis Fed President Kashkari (FOMC non-voter) speak: Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren, Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic, and Minnesota Fed President Neel Kashkari will host a virtual series titled “Racism and the Economy.”
• 01:00 PM Kansas City Fed President George (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Kansas City Fed President Esther George will discuss her outlook for the economy and monetary policy. Audience Q&A is expected.
• 02:00 PM Boston Fed President Rosengren (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren will discuss the economic outlook for 2021 at an event hosted by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. Prepared text and audience Q&A are expected.
• 05:00 PM Fed Governor Brainard (FOMC voter) speaks: Fed Governor Lael Brainard will speak at a Fed symposium on artificial intelligence. Prepared text is expected. Q&A is not expected.

Wednesday, January 13

• 08:30 AM CPI (mom), December (GS +0.33%, consensus +0.4%, last +0.2%); Core CPI (mom), December (GS +0.08%, consensus +0.1 %, last +0.2%); CPI (yoy), December (GS +1.26%, consensus +1.3%, last +1.2%); Core CPI (yoy), December (GS +1.60%, consensus +1.6%, last +1.6%): We estimate a 0.08% increase in December core CPI (mom sa), which would leave the year-on-year rate unchanged at +1.6% on a rounded basis. Our monthly core inflation forecast reflects a virus-driven pullback in airfares and hotel prices and further normalization in used car prices off of elevated levels. We also expect another decline in the health insurance component. On the positive side, we expect further normalization in car insurance rates. We also estimate a reacceleration in shelter categories because our shelter tracker has recently stabilized and the sequential drag from rent forgiveness might be mostly behind us. We estimate a 0.33% increase in headline CPI (mom sa) due to higher oil prices.
• 01:00 PM Fed Governor Brainard (FOMC voter) speaks: Fed Governor Brainard will give a virtual speech on the economic outlook and full employment to the Canadian Association for Business Economics. Prepared text and moderated Q&A are expected.
• 02:00 PM Philadelphia Fed President Harker (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker will discuss his economic outlook in a virtual event hosted by the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia. Prepared text is not expected. Audience Q&A is expected.
• 03:00 PM Fed Vice Chair Clarida (FOMC voter) speaks: Fed Vice Chair Clarida will hold a virtual discussion on the Fed’s new framework at an event hosted by the Hoover Institution. Prepared text and moderated Q&A are expected.

Thursday, January 14

• 08:30 AM Initial jobless claims, week ended January 9 (GS 795k, consensus 785k, last 787k); Continuing jobless claims, week ended January 2 (consensus 5,000k, last 5,072k): We estimate initial jobless claims increased to 795k in the week ended January 9.
• 08:30 AM Import price index, December (consensus +0.7%, last +0.1%)
• 09:00 AM Boston Fed President Rosengren (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Boston Fed President Eric Rosengren will discuss the economic outlook for 2021 at an event hosted by the Boston Business Journal. Prepared text and Q&A are not expected.
• 11:00 AM Atlanta Fed President Bostic (FOMC voter) speaks: Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic will moderate and give closing remarks on a virtual panel on small business recovery. Prepared text and Q&A are not expected.
• 12:30 PM Fed Chair Powell (FOMC voter) speaks: Fed Chair Powell will take part in a Princeton Economics webinar. Prepared text is not expected. Moderated Q&A is expected.
• 01:00 PM Dallas Fed President Kaplan (FOMC non-voter) speaks: Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan will take part in a virtual moderated Q&A hosted by the University of Texas at Austin.

Friday, January 15

• 08:30 AM PPI final demand, December (GS +0.4%, consensus +0.3%, last +0.1%); PPI ex-food and energy, December (GS +0.2%, consensus +0.1%, last +0.1%); PPI ex-food, energy, and trade, December (GS +0.2%, consensus +0.2%, last +0.1%): We estimate that headline PPI increased 0.4% in December, reflecting stronger energy and food prices and a solid increase in core prices. We expect a 0.2% increase in the core measure excluding food and energy, and also a 0.2% increase in the core measure excluding food, energy, and trade.
• 08:30 AM Empire State manufacturing survey, January (consensus +5.5, last +4.9)
• 08:30 AM Retail sales, December (GS +0.1%, consensus flat, last -1.1%); Retail sales ex-auto, December (GS -0.1%, consensus -0.2%, last -0.9%); Retail sales ex-auto & gas, December (GS -0.3%, consensus -0.3%, last -0.8%); Core retail sales, December (GS +0.3%, consensus flat, last -0.5%): We estimate that core retail sales (ex-autos, gasoline, and building materials) rebounded by 0.3% in December (mom sa). High-frequency data suggest an improvement in retail goods spending trends since our holiday sales update and following the weak November Census report. However, we expect a sharp drop in restaurant spending related to the virus resurgence to weigh on the ex-auto ex-gas category. We estimate +0.1% and -0.1% for the headline and ex-auto measures, respectively, reflecting higher auto sales and gasoline prices.
• 09:15 AM Industrial production, December (GS +0.6%, consensus +0.4%, last +0.4%); Manufacturing production, December (GS +0.5%, consensus +0.4%, last +0.8%); Capacity utilization, December (GS 73.6%, consensus 73.5%, last 73.3%): We estimate industrial production rose by 0.6% in December, reflecting a rebound in the utilities category and a further increase in manufacturing production. We estimate capacity utilization rose by 0.3pp to 73.6%.
• 10:00 AM University of Michigan consumer sentiment, January preliminary (GS 79.5, consensus 80.0, last 80.7): We expect the University of Michigan consumer sentiment index declined by 1.2pt to 79.5 in the preliminary January reading as rising virus spread and job losses could weigh on sentiment.

Source: Deutsche Bank, Goldman,BofA,

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on Friday warned that the suspension of President Donald Trump’s social media accounts wielded “unchecked power” by large tech companies.

Kate Ruane, a senior legislative counsel at the ACLU, said in a statement that Twitter’s decision to suspend Trump from social media sets a precedent for tech companies to silence voices.

The group first took issue with Trump’s usage of social media outlets to question the results of the Nov. 3 election and his allegations of voter fraud.

“We understand the desire to permanently suspend him now, but it should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions – especially when political realities make those decisions easier,” the ACLU statement read.

Ruane said that transparency is needed from Big Tech companies, noting that activists who don’t have alternative ways to communicate will suffer.

“President Trump can turn his press team or Fox News to communicate with the public, but others … who have been censored by social media companies—will not have that luxury. It is our hope that these companies will apply their rules transparently to everyone,” according to the statement.

President Donald Trump speaks at the “Stop The Steal” Rally in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Twitter, which suspended Trump’s account on Friday indefinitely suspended the president’s access. Instagram, Twitch, Facebook, and others have done the same.

Other concerns have been expressed about civil liberties after Apple and Google moved to remove social media app Parler—a social media website used primarily by conservatives—from their respective app downloading stores, saying it has not implemented adequate moderation policies.

“Parler has not taken adequate measures to address the proliferation of these threats to people’s safety. We have suspended Parler from the App Store until they resolve these issues,” said Apple in a statement on Saturday.

Amazon told Parler that it was suspending its Amazon Web Services (AWS) because it wasn’t acting quickly enough against violent content.

“We’ve seen a steady increase in this violent content on your website, all of which violates our terms of service,” the letter stated.

But Parler CEO John Matze said in a statement that big tech companies are working to squash a competitor.

“There is the possibility Parler will be unavailable on internet for up to a week as we rebuild from scratch,” he said in a post on Parler. “This was a coordinated attack by the tech giants to kill competition in the market place … You can expect the war on competition and free speech to continue, but don’t count us out.”

After topping $1 trillion for the first time last week ($1.1 trillion at its peak), the total market cap of the cryptocurrency space has plunged by over 20% this week (back below $900 billion) after a bloodbath in bitcoin and ethereum evisceration this weekend.

Source

Bitcoin plunged from $40,000 on Friday to $32,300 today…

Source: Bloomberg

Ethereum plunged from over $1350 yesterday morning to $1006 this morning…

Source: Bloomberg

“It’s to be determined whether this is the start of a larger correction, but we have now seen this parabola break so it might just be,” said Vijay Ayyar, head of business development with crypto exchange Luno in Singapore.

Various catalysts for the drop have been suggested including dollar strength (despite Biden promises of trillion dollar deficit-spending plans), UK regulatory crackdowns (FCA fraud warnings and bank deposit blocks), and finally, one major institutional buyer throwing in the towel.

First things first, the dollar has been accelerating recently…

Source: Bloomberg

Some crypto traders have suggested comments from the U.K.’s financial watchdog could have raised concerns among recent market entrants.

The FCA issued a stark warning for consumers looking to profit from crypto: be ready to lose everything.

“Investing in cryptoassets, or investments and lending linked to them, generally involves taking very high risks with investors’ money,” the Financial Conduct Authority said in a statement.

The FCA’s concerns include price volatility, the complexity of products offered and the lack of consumer protection regulation around many of the products.

Additionally, The Times reports that some banks are refusing to transfers from bitcoin exchanges.

Some have pointed to Bitcoin’s recent rise above its Stock-to-Flow fair value as being a catalyst for a pullback…

Source

Finally, Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd sparked some concerns when he tweeted that it was “Time to take some money off the table.”

“Bitcoin’s parabolic rise is unsustainable in the near term.”

Bitcoin’s parabolic rise is unsustainable in the near term. Vulnerable to a setback. The target technical upside of $35,000 has been exceeded. Time to take some money off the table.

— Scott Minerd (@ScottMinerd) January 11, 2021

As a reminder, in late December, Minerd predicted Bitcoin could eventually reach $400,000.