Market Snapshot – Asian News Triggers Todays Moves

North Korean Threat Leads Gold Higher

It was once again a bullish day for the gold prices and it seems to be so for many days of late as the prices continue to move higher as the global risks arise. This time, it was the threat of the testing of the hydrogen bomb by North Korea which led to escalation of tension in the region. For a change, South Korea also joined the group by conducting a missile test of its own and this led to a lot of uncertainty in the region. This pushed the gold prices higher and led the stock markets lower during the course of the day. This has become almost a periodic happening over the last month or so as we have seen North Korea conduct such tests almost every 2 weeks and we have been seeing gold prices shoot up whenever that happens.

China Bans ICOs

The other important news came from China as the regulatory authorities in China banned all ICOs. The Chinese region had been a source of many ICOs and we had also seen a lot of Chinese investors investing in many ICOs around the world and with this ban, it is bound to affect the cryptocurrency in a big way. This could also pave the way for a cleanup of the system and a move into a new regime of controlled, regulated and planned ICOs but that is still quite some way off for now. This news led to the crash in the prices of Bitcoin and ethereum and this is likely to continue in the short term as the market begins to digest this news.