Bitcoin is starting the week on the front foot. Bitcoin traded around $86,100 on Monday morning, up 1.14% over the past 24 hours, with a market capitalization of $1.73 trillion. That puts the asset roughly $1,200 below the $87,354 swing high that has capped the rally. It still cannot clear the ceiling, but investors have reason to be optimistic: macroeconomic winds have turned in Bitcoin's favor, potential catalysts are on the calendar, and the daily chart has painted a decidedly bullish picture, with Bitcoin entering a second, stronger "golden cross."

The entire crypto market is worth $2.94 trillion, up 1.36% on the day. The Fear & Greed Index sits at 68, still in "greed" territory and stabilizing sentiment after a dip from "extreme greed" readings last month. The gauge runs from 0 to 100, with higher scores signaling greater greed.

A weak jobs report reshapes Fed expectations

The spark was Friday's jobs report, and it was ugly—for the economy, that is. U.S. employers added only 29,000 positions in September, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly a third of what economists expected. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2%.

Revisions made it worse. July was revised from a gain of 21,000 jobs to a loss of 10,000, and August was cut from 162,000 to 133,000. Annual wage growth cooled to 3.0%.

Bad news for workers, good news for risk assets—that is the unusual math of this cycle. The logic: soft labor data pulls down expectations of further Fed tightening, easing the rate pressure that weighs on assets like Bitcoin. The Federal Reserve raised rates a quarter point to 3.75%-4.00% on September 16 in a unanimous vote. A week before Friday's report, bond traders gave an October hike a 64% chance. After it, those odds fell to roughly 16%-22%, depending on the snapshot.

It is the mirror image of last month. On September 4, a blowout August report sent Bitcoin sliding more than 2% to near $79,300 as hike bets rose. Bitcoin now trades about 8% above that level.

Stocks cheered too. The S&P 500 closed Friday at 7,722.72, up 0.73%, while the Nasdaq gained 1.19% to 27,190.86 and the Dow added 0.49% to 51,176.96. Nvidia hit a fresh record high, and stock futures edged higher Sunday night.

Altcoins are mixed. Ethereum trades at $2,711, up 0.59%, and XRP is at $1.51, up 0.81%. Solana slipped 0.91% to $120.31. All of the top 10 altcoins are in the green, but not a single one has moved more than 1%—except for Hyperliquid, which is up 3.68% on the day to $93.17 and 6% on the week.

ETF money is not fading either. U.S. spot bitcoin ETFs recorded $189.84 million in net inflows on the latest daily reading, with total net assets at $101.1 billion, according to Decrypt data. Spot ETFs hold bitcoin directly and trade on stock exchanges, giving brokerage investors exposure to the asset without the task of buying and storing it themselves.

Rejected at the door, but pushing up with force

The chart explains the hesitation. On the daily time frame, the $87,354 high remains the line to beat.

Momentum is strong. The Relative Strength Index, which scores recent gains against losses on a 0-100 scale where readings above 70 are considered overbought, sits at 64.7—hot, but not extremely overbought. The Average Directional Index, which measures trend strength regardless of direction and reads above 25 as a strong trend, is at 43.4.

Exponential moving averages, or EMAs, track the average price over a set number of days while giving more weight to recent days. A golden cross happens when a faster EMA climbs above a slower one. The chart shows the 50-day EMA (the average price of the last 50 days) above the 200-day EMA, the classic version of a golden cross. This occurred in mid-September, as Bitcoin registered the second best performance in that month, ever.

An even stronger sign has just appeared: the 100-day EMA has now also crossed above the 200-day.

Why is the 100/200 cross even more bullish? Because it is harder to fake. A sharp two-month bounce can drag the 50-day EMA over the 200-day line. To pull the slower 100-day EMA above the 200-day, the price of has to stay elevated for months—which means BTC has not just bounced from the sub-$60,000 levels of July, but rebuilt its medium-term trend.

Together, the two crosses mean the short-term and medium-term averages both sit above the long-term one. Think of it as a second confirmation of the same story. The catch: EMAs lag, so a golden cross confirms a move that has already happened rather than predicting the next one.

On Myriad, a prediction market built by Decrypt's parent company Dastan, traders are leaning bullish on a short-term push. In the October highs market, an $87,500 touch trades at 80%, $90,000 at 59%, $95,000 at 25%, and $100,000 at 12%.

A short but loaded calendar

As for future catalysts, the week's calendar is short but loaded. The Fed releases the minutes of its September meeting on Wednesday, October 7, at 2:00 p.m. ET—a document that lays out the discussion behind the committee's decision. The BLS publishes September CPI on October 14, the Consumer Price Index being the government's headline inflation gauge and a reading the Fed weighs alongside the labor market when setting policy. The Fed's next policy meeting runs October 27-28, with a press conference on October 28 at 2:30 p.m. ET.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are for informational purposes only and do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice.