Midterm Elections and Bitcoin: Jobs Report Friday, New Winter Session Times

The US midterm elections on Tuesday 3 November and the US jobs report on Friday 6 November are the two scheduled events that matter for Bitcoin this week, and the clocks have just changed. The BLS lists the October Employment Situation report for Friday 6 November at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, which is now 13:30 UTC and 16:30 MSK, because US daylight saving time ended on Sunday 1 November. For the same reason the New York cash open is now 14:30 UTC (17:30 MSK), one hour later than last week. On the chart side, nine of our twelve tracked coins have a bearish 4h bias, one is neutral and two are bullish.

This is a plan for the week, not a forecast. Everything below is a date, a time or a measured number, checked on 1 November 2026.

Midterm elections and Bitcoin: the week's events

• Monday 2 November, 14:30 UTC (17:30 MSK): the New York cash open at 9:30 a.m. Eastern. US daylight saving time ended on Sunday 1 November at 2:00 a.m. local time, per NIST, so Eastern time is now UTC-5. Monday is the first weekday on the new times.
• Tuesday 3 November, all day: US midterm elections. The date is Tuesday 3 November 2026, per Wikipedia's 2026 US elections page. We do not have a sourced market schedule tied to the vote, and we do not guess one. Results can arrive over several days and in either direction, so treat the date as a headline risk marker, not a trade setup.
• Tuesday 3 to Friday 6 November: Devcon 8, the Ethereum Foundation's developer conference, in Mumbai at the Jio World Centre, per the Ethereum Foundation blog. It is a conference, not a scheduled protocol or market event. For ETH's own data see the Ethereum market page.
• Friday 6 November, 8:30 a.m. ET (13:30 UTC, 16:30 MSK): the Employment Situation report for October, per the BLS release schedule. It lands one hour before the New York open at 14:30 UTC.

These are the events we confirmed against a source. The monthly Deribit expiry was on 30 October. Unscheduled news, exchange events and token unlocks are outside this calendar.

Winter session times: what moved on Monday

Bitcoin trades 24 hours and daily candles still open at 00:00 UTC. What changes is the local-time sessions. The UK went back to GMT on 25 October, and the US followed on 1 November, so both are on winter time for the first full week. London opens at 08:00 UTC, as it did last week. New York now opens at 14:30 UTC instead of 13:30, so the gap between the two opens grows from 5.5 to 6.5 hours.

If you use UTC alerts for the New York open, move them by one hour if you have not already. The BiasNex engine windows for New York are anchored to New York time, so they also sit one hour later in UTC from Monday. The trading sessions tool shows the current windows, and crypto session times change twice in 8 days lists the full table. For the difference between a session and a kill zone, read kill zones vs sessions.

The jobs report is the one release this week that falls near a session boundary. At 13:30 UTC it comes one hour before the New York open at 14:30 UTC.

Where structure stands

We read the 4h bias of every coin we track from the BiasNex engine on 1 November 2026, at about 07:00 UTC. Bias is the engine's read of the 4h swing structure, not a call on direction.

The latest structure events the engine reports, with its dates:

• BTC is bearish in a trend, with a bearish internal BOS at 79,710 dated 29 October. ETH (bearish internal CHoCH at 2,293.44), SOL (bearish internal CHoCH at 99.26), BNB (bearish internal CHoCH at 734.09) and SUI (bearish internal CHoCH at 0.8988) are bearish in a trend, all dated 29 October.
• XRP (bearish internal BOS at 1.2733) and DOGE (bearish internal BOS at 0.07742) are bearish in a trend, also 29 October. TAO is bearish in a trend after a bearish external BOS at 242.6 on 29 October.
• ZEC is bearish in a correction: its latest event is a bullish internal BOS at 1,330.95 on 29 October, so the bearish bias is under test there.
• NEAR is bullish in a trend after a bullish internal CHoCH at 4.434 on 31 October. STRK is bullish in a pullback, with a bearish internal BOS at 0.04493 on 29 October.
• TON is neutral in a range. Its latest listed event, a bearish external CHoCH, dates from 23 June. See Toncoin explained.

October in structure

October was a month of broadening bearish bias. In our weekly previews the count of bearish coins went from five on 18 October (that week's preview) to seven on 25 October (the FOMC week) to nine today. Neutral went from four to two to one. Between 25 October and 1 November, SOL and TAO moved to bearish; NEAR and STRK stayed bullish. BTC was neutral on 18 October and has been bearish since the 25 October read.

BTC's October candle on Binance spot opened at 83,623.59, reached a high of 87,220.00 and a low of 76,325.98, and closed at 77,582.02, a fall of 7.2% on the month. The weekly candle that opened on 26 October opened at 80,154.09, has a high of 81,971.00, a low of 76,325.98 and was at 78,066.00 when we fetched it on 1 November. The week is still open, so the Sunday session can change the last two numbers. Read the Bitcoin market page for the live read, because this snapshot will be out of date by the Monday open.

Session ranges: last week against average

How big were the moves in each of our five BTC windows? We compare the average range of the five weekday sessions of 26–30 October with the average of the last 10 completed sessions (22–31 October), in US dollars of BTC price.

All five windows ran above average: London prep 404 against 297, London main 582 against 484, NY observe 515 against 407, NY sweep 574 against 475 and NY main entry 945 against 787. Two caveats. The 10-session average contains last week's five sessions, so the two series are not independent. It also contains three weekend sessions (24, 25 and 31 October), when ranges are usually smaller, so part of the gap is the weekday effect. Last week also held the FOMC decision, PCE and GDP, and the monthly expiry, which are the kind of events that widen ranges. Last week's New York windows were measured at the old UTC times, one hour earlier than this week's.

What to watch

1. Monday 2 November, 14:30 UTC: the first New York open on winter time. Check your alerts and chart session boxes are on the new hour.
2. Tuesday 3 November: the US midterm elections. Mark where BTC sits relative to the 79,710 BOS level on the 4h chart before the day starts.
3. The weekly range of 76,325.98 to 81,971.00 as of Sunday morning: a 4h close outside it means BTC has left last week's range.
4. Friday 6 November, 13:30 UTC (16:30 MSK): the jobs report. Note whether the 4h structure changes before the New York open at 14:30 UTC.
5. Bias breadth: nine of twelve coins bearish is the widest reading in our three October snapshots. Whether it narrows or widens on Sunday 8 November is the number to compare.

Nothing here predicts where price goes. These are the places where the structure data and the calendar give a reason to look. More weekly and session guides are in the Learn ICT hub, and the daily, weekly and monthly opens guide covers the levels many traders mark at the weekly open.

FAQ

When are the US midterm elections? Tuesday 3 November 2026. For Bitcoin, the useful point is that the date is a known headline risk, not a scheduled market release with a fixed time.

When is the jobs report this week and what time is it in UTC? The BLS lists the October Employment Situation report for Friday 6 November 2026 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. After US clocks went back on 1 November that is 13:30 UTC and 16:30 MSK.

What time does the New York session open in UTC now? The New York cash open at 9:30 a.m. Eastern is 14:30 UTC (17:30 MSK) from 2 November 2026, one hour later than 13:30 UTC during the week of 25 October.

Is Devcon 8 a market event for crypto? Devcon 8 is the Ethereum Foundation's developer conference, held 3–6 November 2026 in Mumbai. It is a scheduled event, but it has no fixed market time, and we do not treat it as a release.