Amid quite a calm session on the equity or FX markets, cryptocurrencies draw the most attention mainly on the back of an amazing reversal seen on Bitcoin on Friday when the price surged from under $3000 to almost $3800 just in hours. There were no specific reports standing behind such a mind-blowing rebound, though some websites covering cryptocurrencies’ news were cited that traders had shrugged off plans announced last week for China’s three main Bitcoin exchanges to halt trading amid a regulatory crackdown.

Looking back to the Asian session, there were decent gains seen across major indices. his was especially the case with Asian stocks traded in Hong Kong as the CHNComp (Hang Seng China Enterprises) surged as much as 1.2%, followed by the HKComp (Hang Seng) up by 1.15%, JAP225 (Nikkei225) up by 0.5% and the AUS200 (ASX200) inching up 0.4%.

Getting back to the past we didn’t have so a benign beginning to the week for a longer period of time. One could say that moods have stabilized before the crucial event scheduled for this week – the Federal Reserve meeting. Taking account of the weaker than expected readings of US retail sales and industrial output, relatively low probability of a hike by December we could assume that the bar for the US dollar is set quite low ahead of the meeting.

Standard&Poors decided to lift the Portuguese credit rating to an investment grade on Friday for the first time since January 2012. Consequently, the country got out of the junk rating which was announced when Portugal was going through a bailout program provided by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

The beginning of the new week is very subdued with no major moves seen across the FX space. Nevertheless, it could be just calm before the storm when we take a closer look at the full macroeconomic calendar for this week. On the other hand, Monday is likely to be dominated by some central bank speakers with Carney’s one being a cherry on top.