Bitcoin extended its slide on Tuesday, dropping more than $10,000 from its all-time high last week.

The flagship cryptocurrency was last lower by 5% at $63,460.33, according to Coin Metrics. Last week, it climbed to a record $73,679.

The move helped drag other cryptocurrencies lower. Ether lost more than 5% and was recently trading at $3,287.58 after topping $4,000 last week for the first time since December 2021, a drop some analysts predicted following the network’s Dencun upgrade. The token tied to Solana fell 8%, dogecoin lost 7% and XRP slipped 2%.

Among crypto-related stocks, bitcoin proxy MicroStrategy tumbled 10%, while crypto exchange Coinbase fell 5%. Mining stocks were down across the board, with the biggest ones, Riot Platforms and Marathon Digital, lower by 6% and 5%, respectively.

Bitcoin weakness began last week as traders started taking profits after it had soared roughly 70% from the start of the year to its peak last Wednesday. Data from CryptoQuant shows a massive spike in investors selling their bitcoin at a profit on March 12.

Additionally, that profit-taking led to a spike in long liquidations of leveraged bitcoin positions. About $122 million in long liquidations occurred across centralized exchanges on Monday, according to CoinGlass. Last week, there was about $372 million in long liquidations from Wednesday to Friday.

The successful introduction of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds in the U.S. earlier this year has been a key contributor to bitcoin’s rally, which began even before the ETFs were launched in anticipation of their regulatory approval. At the same time, interest from investors and higher demand for bitcoin have also led to increased leverage and heightened high-frequency volatility.

Investors and analysts have warned that traders should exercise caution in March as more volatile price action, combined with an increase in trading volumes, would lead to pullbacks from bitcoin’s long-term uptrend.

Chart watchers have mostly said bitcoin is on a path to new highs but could also see steep corrections along the way.

The Toronto Stock Exchange’s parent company has already completed a major deal this year: its acquisition of ETF education company VettaFi.

According to TMX Group CEO John McKenzie, the deal helps expand its exchange-traded fund business globally.

“The exchange-traded fund is essentially one of the most important innovations in investing in the marketplace history — at least in the last 20 [to] 30 years,” McKenzie told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “What we were really looking to do is … get deeper into providing more support to our clients.”

Even though ETF activity has cooled off from its 2022 records, action in 2023 was still above previous years, according to iShares data.

McKenzie plans to utilize the VettaFi acquisition to facilitate more ETF creation.

“ETF providers can create new products and great solutions so that they can reach a broader investing audience,” McKenzie said. “That’s the one two punch of what we’re doing with that investment.”

TMX’s ETF Screener lists 1,264 ETFs and ETF-related funds on the Toronto Stock Exchange as of Friday.

With VettaFi in the exchange’s tool belt, McKenzie hopes to create new ETFs focusing on Canada’s economic strengths and how they can reach international investors.

“We want to be more global than local,” added McKenzie. “This is a great asset to help us build not just in the U.S., not just in Canada, but around the world.”

Since the acquisition was completed on Jan. 2, TMX shares are up 11%.

Disclaimer

LONDON — The Bank of England held interest rates steady at 5.25% on Thursday, with the announcement detailing the very divided opinions among board members.

The Monetary Policy Committee voted 6-3 in favor of holding rates, with two dissenters favoring a further 25 basis point hike and one voting for a quarter-point cut. This marked the first meeting since August 2008 that MPC members have voted to move interest rates in opposite directions at the same meeting.

“The MPC remains prepared to adjust monetary policy as warranted by economic data to return inflation to the 2% target sustainably,” the Bank said in statement.

“It will therefore continue to monitor closely indications of persistent inflationary pressures and resilience in the economy as a whole, including a range of measures of the underlying tightness of labour market conditions, wage growth and services price inflation. On that basis, the Committee will keep under review for how long Bank Rate should be maintained at its current level.”

Much of the market focus of late has been on when the central bank will start cutting interest rates from their current 15-year high.

U.K. headline inflation unexpectedly nudged upward to an annual 4% in December on the back of a rise in alcohol and tobacco prices, while the closely watched core CPI figure was unchanged at 5.1%.

However, it has remained on a general downward trajectory, while the Bank’s key indicators of the labor market, wage growth and services inflation have all shown signs of easing.

The MPC notably dropped its prior warning that “further tightening” would be necessary if indications emerged of more persistent inflationary pressures, but stopped short of openly signaling that rate cuts were coming into view.

Inflation is projected to fall temporarily to the Bank’s 2% target in the second quarter of this year before rising again in the third and fourth, due to the varying contribution of energy prices to annual comparisons.

Headline inflation is not expected to return to target again until late 2026, the Bank’s newest Monetary Policy Report projected.

This is a breaking news story, please check back later for more.

CNBC’s Jim Cramer on Friday told investors what to watch for on Wall Street next week, highlighting JPMorgan‘s market-moving health-care conference in San Francisco. Taking place from Monday to Thursday, the conference is one of the year’s largest gatherings of major industry CEOs where they reveal earnings guidance and updates on clinical trial research.

“The new year has started with a redistribution of cash out of the ‘Magnificent Seven’ and on to the sidelines,” Cramer said, pointing to health-care stocks as a particularly notable group that will likely be “propelled by what people expect to hear from the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference.”

Cramer will interview several CEOs at the conference, starting with Walgreens CEO Tim Wentworth on Monday. Cramer said he’s interested to hear how the company plans to get its groove back after cutting its dividend nearly in half this week. Cramer will also speak with leadership from Amgen and Medtronic, as well as the new CEO of Bristol Myers, Chris Boerner, whom he’ll ask about the company’s rigorous biotech acquisition plans.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Cramer will continue to interview the CEOs of major industry names, including Eli Lilly CEO David Ricks. Cramer said he’s particularly interested in the company’s diabetes and weight loss drug as well as its Alzheimer’s initiative. He’ll also speak with CVS Health CEO Karen S. Lynch to discuss the company’s ongoing transition from drug store to health-care provider. Cramer will also hear from the CEOs of Pfizer, Regeneron, Novartis, Abbott Labs and Cencora.

Thursday brings the consumer price index for December. Cramer said he thinks those hoping for soft figures will be disappointed. Cramer will also be tuning into CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, next week. The tech event will include commentary by leadership from Nvidia and Dell.

Earnings season kicks off Friday with reports from major banks including JPMorgan, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. BlackRock will also report, and Cramer said he thinks the company’s earnings could give investors a solid overview of the financial industry. He’ll also be paying attention to Friday reports from UnitedHealth Group and Delta.

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Disclaimer The CNBC Investing Club Charitable Trust holds shares of Eli Lilly.

LONDON — European stocks started the final session of 2023 higher, marking a positive end to a solid year.

The regional Stoxx 600 index was up 0.26% in mid-morning trade, with all sectors in the green. Thin trade is expected, while London markets close early.

Spanish pharmaceutical group Grifols was the biggest stock mover, climbing 8.9% after announcing it will sell a 20% stake in Shanghai RAAS, a blood products firm, to China’s Haier for approximately $1.8 billion.

The blue-chip benchmark Stoxx is set to have gained more than 12% in 2023, according to LSEG data, just about reversing its 2022 loss.

Germany’s DAX has risen nearly 20% despite the country’s gloomy economic picture, while France’s CAC 40 and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 have gained 16.3% and 3.64%, respectively.

In the U.S., the S&P 500 index is chasing a new record high to cap off the rally of the last two months.

Latest data releases, including Thursday’s on jobless claims, continue to suggest U.S. economic growth is slowing without grinding to a halt. Market bets currently place a 72.8% probability on the Federal Reserve beginning rate cuts as soon as March 2024, CME’s FedWatch shows.

In the final readings of the year, U.S. annual headline inflation had slowed to 3.1% in November from 6.4% in January.

That compared with a drop to 2.4% from 8.5% in the euro zone, and to 3.9% from 10.1% in the U.K. — both of which have also fueled expectations of rate cuts next year amid sharp economic slowdowns in both economies.

“The apparent loss of U.S. economic momentum in late 2023 suits the view that the full impact of aggressive US Federal Reserve rate hikes may still be in the pipeline,” economists at Berenberg said in a note Friday.

“Nevertheless, the Fed remains on track to pull off the usually elusive feat of a soft landing in 2024. The easing of underlying inflation has encouraged bond and equity markets to play the Fed pivot theme,” they added, though they do not expect the first cut until May 2024.

Data on Spanish inflation will be released on Friday.

U.K. house prices recorded a 1.8% fall in the year to December, according to lender Nationwide, a bigger drop than recent polls suggested but significantly lower than calls made for a fall of up to 10% earlier in 2023.

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Shares of SenseTime fell as much as 9.7% on Tuesday after U.S. short seller Grizzly Research alleged the Chinese artificial intelligence firm inflated its revenue.

SenseTime shares pared some of those losses in Hong Kong and closed 4.86% lower in the afternoon.

Grizzly Research alleged in a report on Tuesday that SenseTime engaged in a so-called “revenue round-tripping” program.

“SenseTime either directly or through intermediaries provides funds to customers that in turn are used to purchase goods from SenseTime that might never have been delivered,” Grizzly Research alleged. The short seller said it got this information via two court cases in China that described the scheme.

SenseTime said in a Hong Kong Stock Exchange filing that it is “reviewing the allegations and considering the appropriate course of action to take to safeguard the interests of all shareholders.”

The Chinese firm said it believes Grizzly Research’s report is “without merit and contains unfounded allegations and misleading conclusions and interpretations.”

SenseTime added that the report “shows a lack of understanding of the Company’s business model and financial reporting structure, and a lack of thorough reading of the Company’s public filings.”

Grizzly Research did not contact SenseTime to verify the information, SenseTime said in its statement.

SenseTime was once viewed as one of China’s most exciting artificial intelligence companies and is best-known for computer vision technology that can power facial recognition software.

However, the company has been a target of U.S. government sanctions. In 2019, Washington put SenseTime on the so-called Entity List, which restricts American firms from doing business with it. The U.S. alleged that SenseTime is linked to human rights violations in China’s Xinjiang region.

At the time, SenseTime said that it does “not have any business in, nor are we aware of our technology being used in the Xinjiang region.”

SenseTime proposed an initial public offering in Hong Kong in mid-2021 but postponed the listing later that year after the U.S. government added it to a list of “Chinese military-industrial complex companies.”

The company ended up doing its listing at the end of December, pricing shares at 3.85 Hong Kong dollars ($0.49). Shares closed at 1.37 Hong Kong dollars on Tuesday, 64% below their IPO price.

Due to SenseTime’s U.S. government blacklisting, the company “has a severely limited target market and therefore no outlook for any real improvement,” Grizzly Research said in its report.

The short seller also took aim at SenseTime’s technology, claiming it has “no competitive moat in AI.”

“We believe SenseTime is operating a fundamentally dead-ended facial recognition software business, plus some additional AI R&D projects with almost no chance of scalable future profits,” Grizzly Research said.

Dan Hornberger has been a fan of the National Football League’s Philadelphia Eagles for as long as he can remember. As an adult, his office has team memorabilia lining the walls.

Last year, the devout supporter went to five home games, about an hour-and-a-half drive from his house. This year, however, Hornberger’s only on track to attend two games as costs soar.

“I’m a huge fan,” Hornberger, 40, said. “Ultimately, what it comes down to is just outright refusal on my part to pay those kinds of prices.”

Sports prices have surged this fall, according to federal data. That’s made game tickets the latest victim of “funflation,” a term used by economists to explain the increasing price tags of live events as consumers hanker for the experiences they lost during the pandemic.

Admission prices for sporting events jumped 25.1% in October 2023 from the same month a year prior, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index data. The category saw the highest annualized inflation rate out of the few hundred that make up the inflation gauge.

CPI as a whole rose a relatively modest 3.2% on an annualized basis. The index tracks the prices of a broad basket of items including milk, jewelry and airline fares.

“We’ve seen this through the entire leisure and hospitality sector,” said Victor Matheson, a professor and sports economist at the College of the Holy Cross. “People are getting back to things that they enjoy doing and are willing to pay a bunch.”

Part of the reason consumers may be seeing higher ticket prices for their favorite sports teams is because of the increasing use of dynamic pricing models, Matheson said. These structures allow ticket-selling platforms to fetch more or less per ticket, depending on demand for the event at any given moment.

There’s also an alignment of attention-grabbing sporting events taking place this fall. Beyond the typical major-league seasons, the Formula One race in Las Vegas last week and the announcement of soccer legend Lionel Messi’s move to the Inter Miami team this summer have boosted enthusiast spending.

But a large reason for the eye-popping 25.1% jump is because of how low prices were a year ago, Matheson said. Teams slashed ticket values in 2022 in a bid to win back fans who had grown accustomed to watching at home.

Sports ticket prices were 14.2% higher in October than in November 2019, a smaller gain than the entire index’s 19.6% increase, a CNBC analysis of CPI data shows. Much of the upward pressure on admission costs has come this year, underscoring the role of funflation as consumers shift their attention from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé concerts to NFL and Major League Baseball games.

“We’re seeing a gigantic bounce back in prices,” Matheson said. 

NFL and National Hockey League sales have approximately doubled in 2023 compared with the prior year, according to ticket platform StubHub. NBA sales were up nearly 60% at the start of the season compared with the last, while college football has seen an increase of around 50%.

To be sure, not every sport this year has seen the same price growth. StubHub said ticket prices across the top 10 sporting events were 15% higher in 2022 than they were in 2023.

Matheson said tamer inflation overall should help cool sector-specific growth. A return to a more normalized entertainment spending routine following the post-pandemic experience boom can also help quell demand and prices, he added.

Rodney Paul, director of the sports analytics program at Syracuse University, said interest in attending games should be somewhat stable even if the economy worsens. That’s because a sizable portion of the consumer base is well-off enough to afford pro-sports tickets — which he said is essentially a luxury item — and should be able to better weather a downturn given their financial status.

But Paul said a meaningful change to the state of the economy could push fans who are less financially stable to cut back on extraneous expenses, in turn hurting demand. Cash-strapped consumers may justify spending more than they’d like to this year by reminding themselves they didn’t splurge as much or at all on game tickets during the pandemic, Matheson said.

Part of the financial stress comes from the resale market for tickets, some sports enthusiasts say. The rising price of parking and food inside of the stadium also have to be factored in to the financial calculation of fans such as Hornberger and Sara Weddington.

Weddington was able to save enough enough to attend a Kansas City Chiefs game last season, but she said it feels out of the question this year as prices have climbed. The long-time resident of the Kansas City area said she feels for people who have never gotten to see a game before recent cost increases.

“To have such a monumental part of the community be so out of reach for a lot of people is really upsetting,” the 23-year-old said. “Not being able to go to a game is like going to a candy store and not being able to get any candy.”

Still, Paul of Syracuse University said sports have taken on a new meaning in the post-pandemic world. As people increasingly work from home, he said there’s a larger need for in-person social spaces — and those who can afford it are more willing to shell out.

“There’s a real craving for that kind of feeling of togetherness that the sports world brings,” he said. It’s “a really exciting experience that maybe is even more exciting now because people had lost it in the past.”

— CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.

UBS shares climbed on Tuesday morning after the Swiss banking giant resoundingly beat expectations for underlying profit.

The bank recorded an underlying operating profit before tax of $844 million, well ahead of consensus expectations. UBS shares added 4% in early trade as a result.

Factoring in $2 billion in expenses related to the integration of fallen rival Credit Suisse, UBS posted a bigger-than-expected third-quarter net loss attributable to shareholders of $785 million. Analysts polled by Reuters had anticipated a quarterly net loss of $444 million in a company-compiled poll.

Here are some other highlights:

Total group revenues were $11.7 billion, up 23% from $9.54 billion in the second quarter.CET1 capital ratio, a measure of bank liquidity, was 14.4%, unchanged from the previous quarter.Credit Suisse Wealth Management generated positive net new money inflows for the first time since the first quarter of 2022, contributing to inflows of $22 billion for UBS Global Wealth Management.

“You could see that, sequentially, we improved the underlying performance across Wealth Management, Asset Management and our Personal and Corporate banking in Switzerland. They both grew on a quarter-on-quarter basis,” UBS CEO Sergio Ermotti told CNBC on Tuesday.

“The IB [investment bank] has been facing more challenging market conditions, particularly when you look at our business model and the fact that we have been onboarding resources from Credit Suisse. But it was a very solid quarter, and we made very good progress in our integration plans, and at the same time we saw very strong inflows from clients.”

A ‘good set of results’

Analysts at Citi highlighted on Tuesday that the $844 million underlying profit before tax figure was “notably ahead of prior company guidance (of break-even), treble consensus expectations and 6% ahead of our above-consensus forecast.”

“As we expected the beat is driven by better opex [operating expense], 7% below consensus, with revenues also 1% ahead. This is then slightly offset by heavier provisions,” they noted, adding that the acceleration of Wealth Management net new money inflows in September was also “encouraging.”

UBS is also in the process of fully integrating Credit Suisse’s Swiss banking unit — a key profit center — and is expected to cut a hefty proportion of the legacy bank’s workforce.

UBS reported net new deposits of $33 billion across its Global Wealth Management and Personal and Corporate Banking (P&C) divisions, with $22 billion coming from Credit Suisse clients and positive deposit inflows for P&C in September, the month after UBS announced the decision to integrate the domestic bank.

The bank also announced earlier this year that it is targeting gross cost savings of at least $10 billion by 2026, when it hopes to have completed the integration all of Credit Suisse Group’s businesses.

LONDON — The Bank of England is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged on Thursday, as data continues to show moderating price pressures and weakening economic activity.

As of Thursday morning in London, the market was pricing around an 89% probability of a second consecutive hold, after the Bank ended a run of 14 straight hikes in September with a surprise 5-4 vote among members of the Monetary Policy Committee.

U.K. inflation came in at 6.7% in September, unchanged from the previous month and considerably higher than in other G7 economies. Britain’s inflation remains on a general downward trajectory.

Meanwhile, recent PMI data points to a soft economic growth outlook, while the labor market, a key indicator for the MPC, has shown signs of loosening.

The S&P Global/CIPS flash PMI (purchasing managers’ index) reading for October reflected that business activity decreased for the third straight month in October and posted its largest monthly decline since January, recording lower output in both the manufacturing and services sectors.

New work and backlogs of work declined, suggesting a lack of pressure on business capacity, while private sector employment fell for the second month in a row and lower confidence in the year-ahead business outlook resulted in hiring freezes. Business optimism sank to its lowest point in 2023, the S&P Global report said.

“U.K. economic activity appears to have slowed further, the housing market is weaker, consumer spending is falling, and inflationary pressure is showing further signs of dissipating. It’s only wage growth that has surprised to the upside, but this is unlikely to persist given other indicators of labour market weakness,” said Mike Riddell, head of macro unconstrained at Allianz Global Investors, on Tuesday via email.

The firm agrees with market consensus that rates will stay on hold.

“No doubt the BoE will signal that rates can still rise if economic data indicates a need, but as voting member Swati Dhingra recently highlighted, the long lags between changes in monetary policy and their impact on the economy mean that only up to a quarter of all the BoE hikes in this cycle have made a dent on the UK economy so far,” Riddell said.

He added that the MPC will be keen to keep its options open but will for now want to wait and observe how much pain prior hikes inflict on the economy.

In a research note on Tuesday, Barclays another rate hold is all but guaranteed, given a softer-than-expected data flow compared to the MPC’s last set of projections in August, along with the surprise pause in September, when the economy was “if anything, slightly less weak than now.”

The British lender sees the U.K. central bank rate remaining at 5.25% until August 2024, before the first of an expected four 25 basis point cuts.

“We expect that the data-dependent guidance is unlikely to change, with the MPC preserving, at least in theory, the possibility of further hikes in order to prevent expectations of cuts being brought further forward,” said Barclays economist Abbas Khan.

“In terms of the vote split, we expect a 1-6-2 outcome (-25bp/hold/+25bp respectively), with external member Dhingra voting for a cut (which would be the first time a committee member has voted to lower rates in this hiking cycle), and with external members Haskel and Mann voting for a 25bp hike.”

Markets not expecting rates below 4% ‘ever again’

While the MPC’s Dhingra noted the need to assess the lagging impact of monetary tightening, fellow member Catherine Mann said that she was still concerned about persistent rises in the cost of living in the U.K. With annual CPI unchanged in the last print, there could be no guarantees that the Bank has finished hiking.

Central banks will now be wary of fresh upside risks to energy prices and supply chains, if the Israel-Hamas conflict envelopes the wider region.

Markets are not pricing any further hikes, but Allianz’s Riddell highlighted that only a few further gradual cuts are expected from August 2024 over the subsequent few years and said it was “striking that the market’s central case is for the BoE to not cut interest rates below 4% ever again.”

“The only way that we can rationalise this is if U.K. inflation remains stuck at 3% or higher forever, and/or the U.K. economy avoids a meaningful recession,” he said.

“But the spare capacity that is set to be created following the very aggressive rates hikes of the last year leads us to conclude that the hit to U.K. growth is likely to be far greater than markets are currently discounting, and inflation pressure ought to therefore quickly subside through this year and especially into next year.”

Central banks around the world are reaching a pivotal stage, as they near the end of lengthy monetary tightening cycles, following significant progress in wrestling down sky-high inflation.

The U.S. Federal Reserve will announce its latest monetary policy decision on Wednesday and is also expected to leave rates on hold in light of recent economic data and a spike in U.S. Treasury yields.

The European Central Bank last week held rates steady at their current record high of 4%, ending a run of 10 straight hikes.