US, European Stocks Up but Crypto Traders Remain Cautious

Bitcoin was up 1 percent while ether up by less than 1 percent.

Notable 24 hour performances on CoinDesk's digital asset board today as of 20:00 UTC include monero, up 8 percent; tron, up 3 percent and IOTA in the green by 2 percent.

Assets in the red include bitcoin SV, down 1 percent; NEO lower by less than 1 percent and Zcash down under 1 percent.

Japan's Nikkei 225 Index closed its day at 5:00 UTC down 4.5 percent, a reversal for the key Asian equities market after spending the week closing in the green.

As for Europe, the FTSE 100 Index was up 2 percent at its session close 17:00 UTC. This comes after the British equity index delivered its second-best percentage gain on record on Tuesday, March 24, climbing 9.1 percent.

In the U.S., the S&P 500 Index closed up 6 percent at 20:00 UTC."Looks like stimulus is short-term good for all assets, crypto included," said Kevin Zhou, CEO of algorithmic trading firm Galois Capital.

On March 24, IHS Markit released its monthly report on the composite Purchasing Managers' Index.

PMI tracks the overall health of the U.S. manufacturing and service sectors and it came in at 40.5, down from 49.6 in February, the largest drop since 2008."We may very well be in a recession, but I would point to the difference between this and a normal recession," U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said March 26 in an interview with NBC. "There is nothing fundamentally wrong with our economy," he added.

Cryptocurrency traders are concerned with the direction bitcoin price might go.

The market experienced a huge jump around 12:00 UTC on March 23.