Most of the crypto market is down, but Cosmos (ATOM) price is up — Why?

The Ethereum Merge has finally happened. It’s over, and fortunately it went smoothly without any major hiccups. As predicted by many, the event turned out to be a “buy the rumor sell the news” style event, or perhaps, the hotter-than-expected consumer price index print on Sept. 12 was the real catalyst that pushed the market in its current direction. 

Regardless of the reasons for this week’s downturn, the Merge is over and in its wake, bulls are left holding a whole lot of nothing. It’s likely that a new bullish narrative will need to emerge, or analysts will need to keep a close eye on smart money to see what assets they elect to rotate into.

So now that it’s over, what’s the new narrative? Surge, verge, purge, or splurge? Maybe dirge?

— Galois Capital (@Galois_Capital) September 15, 2022

Remember, “The Merge,” according to so many “smart” people, was meant to be a bullish event that would possibly send Ether price higher and the treasure trove of hardfork ETH POW tokens was meant to magically materialize multi-billions of dollars in liquidity which would likely inflow to Bitcoin and help the ailing asset to break out of its current range.

Well, none of that happened. It’s not to say that it won’t happen, but the current reality is a market painted in a bright shade of red. Bitcoin’s Sept.15 drop below $20,000, induced a market-wide correction resulting in double-digit losses for a majority of altcoins and at the moment, there isn’t an easily graspable story for investors to interpret as bullish.

Not everything is dumping

There does happen to be an outlier, and its name is Cosmos (ATOM). To the surprise of some, it’s one of the few green assets on the charts on Merge day. Currently, the altcoin reflects a 9.4% gain and it has rebounded strongly off its Sept.14 low at $13.19.

Previous analysis discussed how ATOM price trades within an ascending channel, riding above the 20-day moving average and suggested that dips to and under the moving average reflected good purchase opportunities. A simple technical analysis of ATOM’s price action would focus on:

• ATOM price continues to make higher lows and higher highs while trading within the trendlines of an ascending channel.

• ATOM price saw a brief bull break outside of the channel, tapping the 200-day moving average and then correcting back to the channel midline and 20-MA to confirm each as support.

• After testing support, price resumed the uptrend and now trades in the top of…