Ether has reached $4,760 for a few moments today, which was just 2.2% below the ATH of $4,870 that it topped 20 days ago. But retail investors don’t seem very bullish.
While a descending channel that would indicate support at $3,960 could be drawn, the positive 5.4% of today doesn’t seem to be connected to the negative performance of Bitcoin.
Also today, commodities and stocks went under following the US Federal Reserve admitting that inflation isn’t just a “transitory” trend with Jerome Powell, the Fed chair, stating that the relaxed money policies of the bank could come to a halt earlier than hoped.
The perpetual contracts futures data is a good indicator of how confident traders are exactly regarding the price recovery of Ether. Retail traders usually rely on this as a result of the fact that it tracks the regular spot markets.
For all futures contract trades, longs and shorts are always matched, but with varied leverages. As a result, exchanges ask for a funding rate from the side that is asking for more leverage with the fee going to the other side.
Neutral markets usually show a 0% to 0.03% positive funding rate which is about 0.6% per week. This means that longs are the ones that pay. Retail traders have kept neutral since November 4th. The last time there was a move above 0.07% was on October 21st.
Data from exchanges highlights the long-to-short net positioning of traders.
It is recommended that you check changes and not absolute figures since there can be differences between the methodologies used by various exchanges.
Ether experienced a rally of 17% over the previous four days; nonetheless, traders at OKEx and Huobi actually decreased their longs. This was very obvious in the case of OKEx since the indicator made a drastic move from 120% which was favoring bulls on November 25th to just 30% only three days later.
As of now, data shows that whales and arbitrage desks have lessened their long exposure, and retail traders continue to be suspicious regarding the latest bull run.
Source: CoinTelegraph.com