Wall Street was mixed on Friday, with the S&P closing flat to turn in its first back-to-back weekly decline since February, the Nasdaq inching down 0.5% and the Dow advancing 0.4% thanks to a jump in Boeing shares, CNBC reports

BTC chaos ripples across financial markets: A violent week in the crypto markets was felt in other asset classes, raising questions about the potentially destabilizing effects of a huge Bitcoin sell-off, the Financial Times says. As BTC crashed 30% on Wednesday, government bonds and the safe-haven JPY gained, while S&P 500 futures and oil slipped.

This has left some analysts scratching their heads: “The catalyst for these moves appears to have been a sudden rout in BTC,” Rabobank analysts wrote in a note, while adding an important caveat that it “seems hard to conceive of how there can be a direct link between BTC’s gyrations and movements on the part of the global financial market.”

For others, it was very simple: “For people to say BTC shouldn’t influence equity prices on a short-term basis, that’s crazy,” Bloomberg quoted a former Merrill Lynch trader as saying. “We live in a 24/7 market and at least in the short term, it’s run by algorithms and they all trade the same stuff. When you get a negative headline you’re going to see it all sell.”

BTC had another rough day on Friday, after Chinese regulators reiterated their intention to regulate the mining and trading of cryptocurrencies. The price of BTC fell more than 8.5% during the day, leaving it down more than 40% from its peak, according to CNBC. The currency has plummeted 37% since 9 May on comments made by Elon Musk and Beijing’s threat of a crackdown.

THE CLOSING BELL-

The EGX30 fell 0.69% on Thursday on turnover of EGP 1.56 bn (19.5% above the 90-day average). Foreign investors were net sellers. The index is down 1.04% YTD.

In the green: EFG (+2.1%), Crédit Agricole (+1.3%) and Emaar Misr (+1.3%).

In the red: Elsewedy Electric (-4.2%), MM Group (-3.1%) and Fawry (-2.8%).