Financial markets remain under the weather this week. About half of Europe is closed today and the US session will close early as they get ready to drop the ball on Times Square. 

Tomorrow just about everything will be closed except for crypto and Wednesday will be a hangover day in most of the world. Thursday and Friday I'm assuming will be low volume as well and we'll probably return to full strength by Monday.

Feel free to check the market hours page for the specific hours of the assets you're trading on and be sure to make the most of the rest of the year.

Wishing everyone an amazing year ahead. Happy New Year!!

Today's Highlights

• Government Shutdown: Day 10
• Ripple Earthport Visa

Traditional Markets

I suppose during the holidays, it doesn't matter as much that the US government is entering its 10th day of a partial shutdown. 

Today we're seeing more of the relaxed side of the low volume holiday trading season. Last week was a real roller coaster. Like the weather in London, market conditions can change very quickly and without warning around this time of year.

One of my favorite things to do during the holiday is to watch all the analysts on Bloomberg and CNBC giving their year ahead forecasts. Not that any of them really know what's about to happen next but at this point, we can really use any indication we can get.

As far as it looks, the year of uncertainty is coming to a close and though it may spill over into the first quarter of the next year, there's certainly hope that by mid-2019 or even earlier we'll have some excellent investment opportunities.

In my own portfolio, I'm now holding more than 50% in cash and thinking about doing some sort of live event during the new year to figure out how to allocate it. Obviously, this is not trading advice.

The Ripple Visa Connection

Many in the XRP community have expressed excitement over the weekend about this bit of news...

For those of you who are not familiar, Earthport is a gigantic cross-border payment processor and a long-term partner of Ripple Labs. The $250 million offer that Visa made to buy them out was very generous indeed and represents a mark up of about 300% on Earthport's market price per share.

This high profile acquisition has certainly increased speculation that Visa might be planning on implementing XRP into their global payments network but for some reason, this hasn't shown up the price of XRP as it continues to follow the rest of the crypto market lower.

Sure, it's true that we still don't know what exactly Visa is planning to do with Earthport or if their partnership with Ripple will play any role whatsoever in future plans, let alone XRP. But still, this type of news, had it been delivered during the bull run would certainly have some people buying.

I'd like to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who's reading these daily updates. I'm very grateful that the audience has grown so much over the course of the year and I'd like to wish you all an astonishingly successful 2019!