Let’s face it. Things were better in the financial markets in 2021 than they were in 2022. Inflation’s power of erosion started taking off in 2021, the peak of the markets were happening late in 2021 at the same time digital assets and Bitcoin were peaking, and things just seemed like they couldn’t be slowed down even by COVID. But after 2022 kicked off, particularly with the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an aggressive rate-hike campaign by the U.S. Federal Reserve to fight inflation, 2022 just hasn’t been a good year for the financial markets.

In fact, holding any asset class other some of the high-end alternative asset classes within collectibles has been painful in 2022. The reality is that Bitcoin just isn’t living up to its status as an alternative currency as of yet. Gold and silver have managed to hold up despite rising rates, but they are also down in dollar terms in 2022. Stocks and bonds remain weak in 2022 despite having bounced from the lows seen in recent months.

The one bit of good news is that the selling panic may have peaked from May and June. Collectors Dashboard wants to evaluate just where we are now as the back-to-school kicks off in August. We are looking at the top exchange-traded funds (ETFs) tracking Bitcoin versus gold and silver, as well as live views of the performance of the key ETFs tracking the stock market and the bond market.

While there are spot calculations that can be made, these are the reported tracking price performance metric over the last week and so far in 2022 (YTD):

• The ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (NYSEArca: BITO) -12.6% week and -55.2% YTD
• SPDR Gold Shares (NYSEArca: GLD) -2.5$ week and -5.5% YTD
• iShares Silver Trust (NYSEArca: SLV) -6.3% week and -18.6% YTD

As far as the major equity indexes, we track the following for relative performance of the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ-100. The
SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEArca: SPY) -3.6% week and -12.9% YTD, followed by the tech-have NASDAQ 100 tracker the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ: QQQ) at -5.6% week and -20.9% YTD.

And have bonds been safe in 2022? Not in a rising rate environment. The iShares Core U.S. Aggregate Bond ETF (NYSEArca: AGG) was last seen at -1.6% for the last week and is -11.0% YTD. That is despite a 2.17% dividend yield.

The Bitcoin bulls have tried to remain positive through the 2022 malaise. Bitcoin has recovered from its lows, and Ethereum has even recovered more. That said, the $21,500 or so price was back to flirting with $25,000 within the last two weeks.

Below is a chart montage from Finviz.com showing each of the charts together going back to last November.