3 Assets to Watch: Feb 16 - 20

Global markets are set to have a holiday-thinned week, with major economies shut for various parts of this week:

• Mon, Feb 16: US markets closed for Presidents' Day; Canada markets closed for Family Day; Brazil markets closed for Carnival holiday; various Asian markets close early ahead of Lunar New Year

• Tue, Feb 17: Lunar New Year - markets closed in mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, etc.



At the onset of this trading week, major assets are little changed and holding around key technical indicators:

• Bitcoin (BTC/USDT) is hovering around its 9-day simple moving average (SMA) and trading in sub-$70k waters

• Gold (XAUUSD+) has dipped back below the $5k line, having found support at its 21-day SMA in recent sessions

• Bybit's SP500 - which tracks the benchmark S&P 500 - has found support at its 100-day simple moving average (the 100-day SMA was our downside target cited in our previous Week Ahead preview article, published Monday, Feb 9th)





Assets & Events Watchlist:



Even with the market's schedule disrupted by the holidays, there are still major events and potential trading/investing opportunities to keep an eye out for this week:

1) GBPUSD+



• Tue, Feb 17: UK December unemployment, jobless claims

• Wed, Feb 18: UK January inflation (CPI = consumer price index) and FOMC meeting minutes

• Fri, Feb 20: US December PCE - Fed's preferred inflation gauge

• The British Pound is G10's worst-performer against the US dollar so far this month (Feb 2026) - down 0.3% month-to-date

Bloomberg's FX forecast model = 80% chance GBPUSD trades between 1.3507 - 1.3779 this week.







2) Walmart



• Thur, Feb 19: Walmart to unveil latest quarterly earnings before US markets open

• Markets predict this stock will move 5% up/down when US markets open post-earnings

• This trillion-dollar company's share prices have soared 20% so far in 2026, hitting fresh record highs last week

• Walmart (WMT) is also the 5th biggest gainer within the Dow Jones Industrial Average stock index (DJ30) so far in 2026 (biggest year-to-date gainer on the Dow = Caterpillar up 35% ytd)





3) Bitcoin Cash (BCH/USDT)



• Bitcoin Cash (not Bitcoin) is the best-performing major altcoin so far in February 2026 (up 14.2% month-to-date)

• BCH/USDT surged last Friday (Feb 13th) to test resistance around its 200-day simple moving average (SMA).

• POTENTIAL UPSIDE: If BCH can punch above its 50-day SMA, it could hit the psychologically-important $600 level.

• POTENTIAL DOWNSIDE: A selloff could see BCH revisit the $500 psychological level for support.