Has Bitcoin Infected Wall Street?

It’s been difficult for me to believe that bitcoin (!) – the wackiest of financial products – could ever infect traditional capital markets.

“It’s so fringe. It has to be a fad,” I’ve thought.

But now, I’m beginning to change my mind.

Harry’s found a quite interesting link between the ups and downs of bitcoin… and the stock market. If you missed it… click here.

And in early-December – as bitcoin prices were tearing through every handle, from 11,000 to 19,000 (!) – I finally put my finger on a suspicious link being the bubbling cryptocurrency market and good old-fashioned Wall Street: the exchanges.

Here’s what I told my Cycle 9 Alert subscribers on December 5:

I’m no expert on crypto currencies. That said, I’m pretty sure 2017 will go down in the history books as the year bitcoin went bubble.

It’s checking all the “classic bubble” boxes…

Massive price gains. Up a hair more than 1,000% year-to-date!

Trending on Google Search. Bitcoin now garners 7-times more Google searches than Kim Kardashian. And it’s an international hot topic, with the U.S. representing just the 8th-largest volume of search queries.

Non-investor interest. My wife is asking me about bitcoin. She has zero interest in investor, finance, or economics.

New financial products. Both the Chicago Board of Options Exchange (CBOE) and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) will offer a bitcoin futures contract, beginning December 10 and December 18, respectively.

The last point is what ties the fringe of cryptos to the stalwarts of Wall Street.

Consider this…

The S&P 500 gained an impressive 19% in 2017.

But the SPDR Capital Markets ETF (NYSE: KCE) was up 27%!

And sticking out like a sore thumb, if you thought to look, was the traditionally-stodgy Chicago Board of Options Exchange (Nasdaq: CBOE)… up a massive 69%!