The Katana Programme ended July with a performance of -5.19%. Sideways price action was relentless in the last two weeks of July. BTC traded a range of $63,000 - $70,000 with a number of retracements as the price grinded higher but was unable to hold $70,000 after a pro-Bitcoin speech by Donald Trump. At the time of writing, Bitcoin has sold off to $65,000. The Katana algo entered 9 long positions over the last two weeks with the majority being stopped out on price retracement. The mean reversion algo had one trade on the short side that closed at profit. Periods of flat to negative performance in trend following break out strategies are akin to ‘paying rent’ to be able to participate in the serious trending price movements that occur on a regular basis.

The Mt Gox Bitcoin release appears to have been absorbed relatively smoothly, although the process is not complete as another $3.3 billion worth of Bitcoin was released today.  The Fed remains cautious regarding sticky inflation but there are still wide spread expectations of a September rate. The retail BTC market is largely on the sidelines as the 7-day daily moving average for spot volumes has dropped from $29 billion to $11 billion, or 62%, in the last few months. We remain patient for the eventuation of some decent price moving catalysts into the 2nd half of 2024.