Bitcoin falls, Chinese tech stocks under pressure: Trending tickers

Bitcoin (BTC-USD) is under pressure for a second day. The cryptocurrency is down about 11 percent over the last 5 days, but is still up about 56 percent year to date. Chinese tech stocks such as JD.com (JD), Alibaba (BABA), Baidu (BIDU), and Weibo (WB) are also under pressure as economic fears in China continue to grow. Yahoo Finance Live breaks down some of the trending tickers of the day.

Video Transcript

- Another risk-off play. Bitcoin falling further into the red, trading around the 26,000. Level now it's down 6% on the session, some of the losses being attributed to a "Wall Street Journal" report that revealed Elon Musk's SpaceX wrote down the value of Bitcoin, of the Bitcoin it owns by $373 million over the last two years and has sold the cryptocurrency.

But crypto was already under pressure this week amid that risk-off sentiment play that we've seen. We've seen just a lot of downdraft affecting many of these riskier assets, Seana. I mean, and it's not just Bitcoin. You have Ethereum under pressure. That's down more than 4% today.

And, you know, one of the levels that we've been watching when it comes to Bitcoin is that 25,000 level. Now, the bullish case was if it headed back towards 28,000, and right now it's heading and it briefly broke around that level today, so that is just a key level to watch.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah 25,000 is what-- the key level that a lot of our watching on the street. We are still about 1,000 bucks above that level, but like you said, this is a play that has been under pressure now for several days. We're looking at a weekly loss of just about 11%. When you take a look at some of this data that's coming out, Coin Glass had data out saying that liquidations exceeded $1 billion in 24 hours as prices fell this week.

So, yes, we are seeing a decline, but putting this back and putting it in perspective for everyone, remember, we have seen a massive run up since the start of the year. It's still up just over 60%. So, yes, we are seeing a bit of pressure and you do want to be aware of trends, especially when it comes to Bitcoin here as we still struggle to make sense of some of the activity and some of the trading momentum that we do see, so yes, a reason to be a little bit cautious, but still, we have come a very far way from January 1st.

- From the crypto winter. Exactly. Exactly. That's right.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, let's also take a look at some other movers today, and Chinese tech stocks under pressure amid rising fears about China's economy. So regulators once again stepping in to support financial markets, this time officials asking banks to intervene on [INAUDIBLE] and also ask some investment funds to avoid selling the move. Follows the People's Bank of China cutting rates earlier this week in its biggest cut that we've seen since 2020. So, yes, we're seeing some pressure once again on these stocks today. Jd.com and Alibaba among the worst performers here for the week when you take account jd.com off just over 9%.

But the data that's coming out of China, it almost seemed to be getting worse by this day this week, and the youth unemployment number, the fact that they're not reporting that, at least suspending it for now, is a worrisome sign.

- Right. And it's-- I mean, China is not known as being as transparent, of course, but this is becoming even more opaque in terms of, how do you determine how the world's second largest economy is doing? And it's certainly seen faltering and, you know, more shoes dropping one after the other, and you have that real estate worry when it comes to China.

And again, the larger concern with these companies, with the jd.com, with Alibaba, with Weibo, et cetera, is just this macroeconomic environment and what that means for how well they continue to do. Even if they did better than expected, they have enough cash to kind of weather the storm, the larger risks are just sending red flags.

SEANA SMITH: Yeah, and it's one of the-- yeah, and it's one of the reasons why we are seeing some of this risk-off sentiment in the markets this week, along with a couple of other factors, obviously. But we can take a look at this data that we got out. We got a reading on retail sales, which was weaker than expected. Industrial production numbers also missed the expectation there. So we're seeing this recovery, lack thereof, in China. Obviously, really falling short of what many forecasters had anticipated.

- What they expected. Exactly.