Mar 14
Portfolio Vault Update - Week 11
Over the past 7 days, the share price of the Portfolio Vault went from $67.74 to $72.06, which is a 6.37% increase.
In February, U.S. retail sales saw a modest rebound, increasing by 0.6%, which was below the anticipated 0.8%. This suggests a slowdown in consumer spending during the first quarter, amid rising inflation and high borrowing costs. Despite signs of slowing economic activity, it's unlikely that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates before June. This stance is supported by other data indicating a significant rise in producer prices last month.
The job market remains robust, with fewer Americans applying for unemployment benefits recently. Annual revisions to the data also revealed that laid-off workers are finding new jobs more quickly and spending less time on jobless benefits than previously thought. Chris Low, chief economist at FHN Financial, noted that the Federal Reserve tends to prioritize inflation concerns when faced with slowing economic growth and rising inflation, maintaining a cautious approach to rate cuts.
Retail sales were partly driven by a 1.6% increase in motor vehicles and parts dealers' receipts and a 0.9% rise in sales at gasoline stations, reflecting higher fuel prices. Electronics and appliance outlets, along with building material and garden equipment stores, also saw increases in sales. However, online sales slightly declined, along with sales in clothing, health and personal care, and furniture stores. Sales at food services and drinking places, a key indicator of household finances, increased by 0.4% after a previous drop, highlighting a shift towards essential spending amid high prices and interest rates.
Core retail sales, which exclude automobiles, gasoline, building materials, and food services, remained unchanged in February. This measure is closely linked to the consumer spending component of the gross domestic product (GDP). The Atlanta Fed has adjusted its first-quarter GDP growth estimate to a 2.3% annualized rate from 2.5%, reflecting these trends.
The Federal Reserve has increased its policy rate significantly since March 2022 and is expected to start cutting rates by June. Another report showed that the producer price index for final demand rose by 0.6% in February, with goods prices, including wholesale gasoline and food, driving much of this increase. This rise in producer prices, along with recent consumer price data, suggests that inflation pressures remain, challenging the Fed's efforts to achieve its 2% inflation target.
Risk profile
We have decided to remain ultra bullish Bitcoin as our indicators are flashing an ultra bullish crypto environment. While it's not an alt season environment, we are observing certain altcoins outperforming the market. Consequently, we have rebalanced our vault and we are letting our winners ride. Therefore, our risk profile can be classified as ultra bullish.
Portfolio Vault Assets update
Bitcoin
The Bitcoin ETF market in the United States experienced a notable surge in inflows, with BlackRock's IBIT and Fidelity's FBTC ETFs leading the forefront, collectively attracting nearly $870 million. This influx of funds into the U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETF, amounting to about $700 million, underscores the growing interest from institutional investors in the cryptocurrency space. The substantial inflow of $684.7 million into the U.S. Spot Bitcoin ETF on that Wednesday alone, as reported by Farside Investors, highlights Wall Street's strong inclination towards Bitcoin amidst its remarkable price rally.
BlackRock's IBIT saw an impressive inflow of $586.5 million, while Fidelity's FBTC garnered $281.5 million, showcasing their dominance in the Bitcoin ETF arena. However, the VanEck Bitcoin ETF (HODL) experienced a decrease in inflow, settling at $16.5 million, a drop from $82.9 million the previous day. Despite this, VanEck had seen over $200 million in inflows earlier in the week, following its decision to eliminate fees for the first $1.5 billion in assets until March 2025. Conversely, Grayscale's Bitcoin ETF (GBTC) faced an outflow of $276.5 million, marking a significant increase from the $79 million outflow observed the day before.
The Open Network
Over the past week, TON has seen a 57.23% increase. Telegram will start sharing advertisement revenue with channel owners starting in March. All payments and withdrawals will be settled on The Open Network (TON).
Pendle Finance
Pendle has decreased by 6.17% over the last seven days, continuing both its long-term and short-term trends. The Total Value Locked (TVL) has reached a new all time high this week, but Pendle keeps achieving milestones on a weekly basis.
Solana
Solana has increased by 22.40% in the last seven days, with the chance of it breaking out of its range. With Solana overtaking Ethereum on DEX volumes, it seems that most on chain participants have flipped over to Solana because of the cheap fees. We are now seeing a new wave of innovation with the SPL token standard.
Fetch
Fetch is down 7.55% in the last seven days. Fetch's usecase is somewhat similar to the new release of OpenAI, Custom GPTs. OpenAI saw a surge of new users after the annoucement of this feature, as has temporarily stopped the onboarding of new users because of a network
Bittensor
Bittensor is down 8.10% in the last seven days. The launch of subnets in October was a tremendous success, with subnet slots filling up with exciting projects. Subnets have allowed the creation of a plethora of mechanisms on Bittensor, but the design is not complete. Subnet emissions are currently determined by a group of validators on Subnet 0. This was a good initial way to bootstrap the system, but is not sustainable long term, as it creates centralization around subnet 0.
Celestia
Celestia is up 6.12% in the last 7 days. Celestia is a modular consensus and data network that enables anyone to easily deploy their own blockchain with minimal overhead. Celestia is built on the Cosmos SDK and uses Tendermint as its consensus mechanism. Celestia has a huge hype for airdrop farmers, as every celestia partner is airdroping tokens to Celestia stakers.
Pyth
Pyth Network is up 36.52% in the last 7 days. The core application of Pyth Network lies in providing real-time, accurate financial data to blockchain-based DeFi applications, thereby enhancing their functionality and reliability. With new applications being launched everyday, more and more of these are picking Pyth over Chainlink as an oracle provider. This has caused the gap in market cap to diminish. There is a lot of speculation going around that Pyth Stakers will also be receiving numerous airdrops in the future.
Stacks
Stacks is up 7.92% in the last seven days. Stacks is a Bitcoin layer for smart contracts; it enables smart contracts and decentralized applications to use Bitcoin as an asset and settle transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain. DeFi Llama reports all time high total value locked for Bitcoin L2 Stacks.
Vault Composition
Due to the recent price action and market circumstances, we have decided to rebalance the vault, the composition looks like this:
Until next week,
Flagship’s Captain team
Disclaimer: Nothing on this site should be construed as a financial investment recommendation. It’s important to understand that investing is a high-risk activity. Investments expose money to potential loss.
