Trading Ether as it Approaches its Short-Term Support
A break beneath the key level would hurt what are already weakened short-term technicals, and test what is clearly extreme buy bias among retail traders.
US equity index futures are up to start what is in terms of seasonality a strong November and follows a month of gains for the S&P 500 (m/m +1.9% to 6,840) and more so the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (m/m +4.3% to 25,858), but when it comes to the crypto sphere and it’s clear ‘Uptober’ didn’t live up to expectations with Bitcoin down about 4% and Ether by a larger 7% with its price nearing a crucial short-term support level. Cryptocurrencies took a dive when trade worries struck and failed to recover properly when those worries subsided suffering a correlation break with the tech/AI trade.
Treasury yields ended the week higher across the curve following the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) ‘hawkish cut’ last Wednesday, and market pricing (CME’s FedWatch) via majority is still anticipating a rate cut in December but where the likelihoods have fallen back, and an ongoing minority on reducing it to 3.25-3.5% in January. There were a few FOMC (Federal Open Market Committee) members speaking recently, including Waller that they have a lot of data despite the government shutdown and that the labor market is weak while tariffs are having a minor effect on inflation. But then came the hawks with Logan saying that they were wrong to cut rates last week and skeptical a rate cut in December is the right move, so too Hammack that there are challenges to both sides of the mandate and wouldn’t have cut rates, with Schmid’s opposition to a rate cut last week due to his view that the “labor market is largely in balance, the economy shows continued momentum, and inflation remains too high”
Week ahead
As for the week ahead, we’ll get manufacturing PMIs (Purchasing Managers’ Index) today including ISM’s (Institute for Supply Management) expected to remain in contracting territory, services PMIs on Wednesday as well as ADP’s non-farm estimate but where the Supreme Court hearing on tariffs will no doubt take plenty of attention, and UoM’s preliminary consumer sentiment and inflation expectations on Friday. There will also be more earnings including a couple key Nvidia proxies.
Ether’s technical overview, strategies and levels
Looking at the daily time frame and price is beneath all its main short-term moving averages and most of its main long-term ones, at the lower end of the narrowed Bollinger Bands, on the DMI (Directional Movement Index) front the -DI over the +DI by a large enough margin to now label it as negative, an RSI (Relative Strength Index) falling even if not yet in oversold territory, and an ADX (Average Directional Movement Index) by one calculation well in trending territory.
Keep in mind that a lot of the key technical indicators are in close proximity to each other so it doesn’t take much to shift the technical narrative in the shorter-term time frame, while zooming out to the weekly time frame and it’s ‘cautious consolidation’ not showing signs of settling here and in turn going opposite a move only after a significant reversal off the weekly 1st levels waiting for price to move beyond them significantly first and only if they come back to consider initiating. That’s if you fall into the weekly conformist camp, as otherwise for contrarians there are breakout strategies.
The role is somewhat reversed on the daily time frame where the technical overview is ‘consolidation – volatile’, with breakout strategies for daily conformists off the daily 1st Resistance/Support levels of which it has already gone beneath for today, while contrarians have reversals if they expect a move back to the Relative Starting Point. Breakout strategies may not always outperform in shorter-term time frames and at times may require interday follow-through when intraday price action is limiting, even if that isn’t the case this morning.
Capital.com’s client sentiment for Ether
When it comes to trader bias, it’s been a consistent story of extreme long sentiment for months within the crypto sphere, and in turn not just exclusive to Ether where 90% of them are holding long positions while 10% are short. It’s nearly identical in Bitcoin at 89% long and 11% short, and higher for Ripple at 96% long vs only 4% short.
On the institutional front, there was the Bank of America reporting crypto funds taking in $0.6bn for the week ending October 29, and the weekly CoinShares Digital Asset Fund Flows report from early last week showing weekly flows into Bitcoin while outflows out of Ethereum. We don’t have the latest figures out of the CFTC regarding their CoT (Commitment of Traders) report due to the ongoing government shutdown, but the bias has generally been nearly the middle albeit of lesser significant due to arbitrage strategies being deployed (on futures vs spot).
Client sentiment mapped on the daily chart
Source: Capital.com
Period: SEPTEMBER 2025 – NOVEMBER 2025
Past performance is not an indicator of future results.
Ether’s chart on Capital.com’s platform with key technical indicators
Source: Capital.com
Period: AUGUST 2025 – NOVEMBER 2025
Past performance is not an indicator of future results.