Stocks, gold, and Bitcoin have split onto sharply different paths in 2026, according to a report from trading firm BIT, which ties the divergence to Kevin Warsh’s arrival at the Fed, the Iran conflict, and the AI investment boom. The S&P 500 has gained 9% year to date while gold fell 6% and Bitcoin dropped 31%.
Trading firm BIT argues that the long-standing correlation between equities, gold, and Bitcoin has broken down, as investors keep repricing assets around shifting macro narratives rather than one dominant theme. So far this year the S&P 500 has climbed 9%, gold has fallen 6%, and Bitcoin has dropped 31%.
Warsh, Iran, and a hawkish Fed
BIT traced the first shift to Federal Reserve policy. After President Donald Trump proposed Kevin Warsh to lead the central bank, markets abandoned earlier expectations of three rate cuts this year and began pricing in a more hawkish path. The June Federal Open Market Committee meeting reinforced that stance, keeping pressure on assets that typically benefit from easier liquidity, including Bitcoin and gold.
Then came Iran, which closed the Strait of Hormuz after strikes by the United States and Israel, sending oil prices jumping and equities falling. Gold slipped too, as markets expected Middle Eastern central banks to redirect funds toward rebuilding damaged infrastructure instead of buying bullion. Meanwhile Bitcoin dipped below the $60,000 level, breaking what BIT called its earlier resilience during geopolitical crises.
Attention then turned almost entirely to artificial intelligence, with Nvidia’s reported $2 billion stake in Marvell Technology and Anthropic’s annual revenue passing the $30 billion mark, ahead of the $20 billion OpenAI had reported. That lifted tech shares while pulling capital away from other assets.
Where BIT thinks this goes
Enthusiasm around AI began fading in June, according to BIT, as the “tokenmaxxing” trade lost steam when firms confronted the true cost of AI tokens and cheaper open-source models from China added pressure. During that stretch, spot Bitcoin ETFs cut holdings by about $9 billion as BTC fell from about $82,000 to near $63,000.
The firm views gold as technically oversold and sees Bitcoin nearing a cycle bottom between $50,000 and $55,000. Yet it does not expect the divergence to last, especially if the September FOMC meeting softens the Fed’s hawkish stance and AI spending recovers while inflation cools. In that case, gold, BTC, and AI trades could turn higher together.
Source: CryptoPotato
Trading involves risk.
Risk Disclaimer
