Welcome to the Forward Guidance newsletter, brought to you by Casey Wagner and Ben Strack. Here’s what you’ll find in today’s edition:

• It was an Uptober after all. Here’s what could be in store for November. 

• A big week for earnings ended with some hits and misses, and some big hits to share prices. 

• Find our weekly economic data recap below.

After ‘Uptober’ plays out, what could we see in November?

The historic trend of BTC rising in October ended up occurring again despite a rocky first half of the month and a rough final day. All said and done, the asset’s price rose nearly 11% during the month.

BTC started October around the $64,000 mark and breached $66,000 a couple weeks in before breaching $73,000 earlier this week. Some attributed the run to heavy bitcoin ETF inflows and a possible Donald Trump victory as some polls (and betting markets) swung in his favor.

On Halloween though, bitcoin dipped a few percentage points, trading between $69,000 and $70,000 for much of the day. 

Historically, positive returns have been a bit more of a toss-up during the year’s 11th month, with four of the last six Novembers in the red, Coinglass data shows. 

Still, November has the highest average monthly return for BTC — thanks to 449% growth during the month in 2013. The cryptocurrency also notched returns of 53% and 43% in November 2017 and November 2020, respectively. 

The macroeconomic context globally is one of central banks turning toward monetary loosening, noted OTC Capital CEO Brian Dixon — a favorable backdrop for BTC.

“A lot of the upwards price action seems to have been front-run earlier this year because of the approval and launch of the bitcoin ETFs, and this was followed by months and months of sideways action,” Dixon told Blockworks. “Now, however, after a period of prolonged consolidation, I believe we may appear to be headed toward a major and sustained breakout.”

But a potential recession — should the Fed be unable to achieve a soft landing — could disrupt the upward trend bitcoin has generally maintained since early 2023, according to YouHodler chief of markets Ruslan Lienkha. 

“The psychological level of around $80,000 may act as a point where investors start to take profits, potentially introducing some selling pressure,” he added.

Demand for bitcoin ETFs was ample in October, with inflows totaling $5.4 billion during the month. This was a substantial jump from September, during which nearly $1.3 billion worth of assets entered the fund segment. 

Overall, October marked the second-best flow month for the category — falling shy of the nearly $6.1 billion seen in February.

You already know about some of the possible US election implications on the crypto market, and we’ll talk more about that on Monday. But maybe it’s best not to think about that all weekend.

— Ben Strack

This is the amount crypto companies have collectively spent on defensive litigation in the US, according to the Blockchain Association, a policy advocacy group. BA on Wednesday launched a new dashboard focused on tracking the so-called “regulation by enforcement” trend from American agencies.

US equities opened higher Friday morning, clawing back some of Thursday’s losses that saw the Nasdaq Composite and S&P 500 indexes drop 1.8% and 1.2%, respectively. 

The selloff was led by tech stocks, triggered by disappointing outlooks from giants Meta and Microsoft, both of which reported after the close yesterday. 

Both Meta and Microsoft beat expectations on some earnings metrics, but you wouldn’t know that looking at the share prices. Analysts attribute Thursday’s drops (-4% for Microsoft and -3% for Meta during after hours trading) to disappointing projections from both companies. 

Microsoft execs estimate between $68.1 billion and $69.1 billion in revenue for Q4, missing Wall Street’s forecast of $69.83 billion. The tech giant anticipates its cloud computing platform, which saw a 33% increase in quarter-over-quarter revenue during Q3, will slow during the final months of this year. 

Meta similarly beat on earnings per share and revenue for the third quarter, but execs say its spending spree is going to continue through the end of 2024. They calculate capital expenditures for the year to come in between $38 billion and $40 billion. This is up from the range given during the company’s last quarterly earnings report. Meta is also forecasting a “significant” increase in AI-related infrastructure expenses in 2025. 

Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research, said it wasn’t just Big Tech weighing on equities Thursday. Earnings across the board were disappointing (looking at you, Uber, Ebay and Intercontinental Exchange), plus economic data looks like we may see higher rates for a more sustained period of time. 

More on that below.

— Casey Wagner

It was a busy week of economic data with inflation and labor market reports. We covered PCE in yesterday’s edition, but here’s what else happened this week: 

• The headliner for this week was today’s US employment report for October, which came in, by most accounts, as a major disappointment. Nonfarm payrolls increased by just 12,000 last month, missing analysts’ expectations of 100,000 adds by a long shot. Unemployment remained unchanged at 4.1%, up 0.5% from a year ago, and the combined job creation totals for August and September got a downward revision to 112,000. 

• Meanwhile, Wednesday’s Q3 GDP report came in just a bit cool, showing a 2.8% increase vs. an expected 3%. Even so, the report does show solid growth, but not enough to deter central bankers from making an interest rate cut next week. 

• Initial jobless claims, on the other hand, came in a bit hot. There were 216,000 first time filers for the week ended Oct. 26, a 12,000 decrease from the week prior and lower than forecasts, which called for 230,000. Again, this means we are unlikely to see any aggressive action from the Fed come next week, but markets were already all but certain a 25 basis point cut is coming our way.

— Casey Wagner

• Crypto gaming company Immutable has been hit with a Wells notice from the SEC, according to a Friday statement. Wells notices typically precede a formal enforcement action from the securities regulator. 

• As election night approaches, one of the most important races for crypto fans is shaping up to be a close call. Current Senate Banking Committee Chair Sherrod Brown leads Republican challenger and crypto supporter Bernie Moreno 47% to 46%, according to the latest polls.