As investors, we tend to make a lot of decisions based on politics. As citizens, our political preferences tend to influence our investment decisions. So when a report came out showing that gun sales had slumped in the United States during the holiday season, some analysts blamed Donald Trump.


Gun makers were quick to point out that there was a surge in purchases during 2016 because people thought Hillary was going to come to power and “take our guns away.” Still, the fact that they’re less than last year doesn’t explain why 2017 was the second biggest year in the firearm industry ever. After reading several articles, I decided to take a look at the data for myself. For your convenience, I’ve linked to it here. As a citizen, all I see here is a strong surge in the United States, with the trend over the last 20 years gaining crypto-like momentum no matter who was in power. As an investor, I’m thinking it might be prudent to add a few firearm stocks to my portfolio.

Traditional Markets

Even though the gains in crypto dwarf the stock markets, the stocks have been far more consistent lately. While cryptos are prone to large double-digit percentage pullbacks, we haven’t seen any of those in the stock market for a very long time.

Yesterday, the Dow Jones surpassed 25,000 points for the first time ever, less than one year after crossing 20,000.

The rest of the markets are celebrating at the moment with Asian indexes sharply higher and a particularly green European Opening.

Ready Set Grow

Though there’s a ton of data coming out on the economic calendar today, the most important will no doubt be the US Non-farm Payrolls. Analysts are forecasting a strong number here, expecting to see that 190,000 jobs were added to the US economy in December.

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Confirmation bias may send the stock markets even higher but a disappointment will likely be harmful. Also keep a close on the US Dollar, Gold, and Oil to gauge the market’s reaction to the data, especially if there’s a surprise. An NFP setup using eToro’s new procharts tool might look something like this.

Also, the ISM Non-manufacturing data will be published 30 minutes after the opening bell. So be sure to watch that as well.

Ether 1K

The cryptomarkets rejoiced yesterday as Ethereum passed $1000 for the first time ever!

The price per Ether token to be used in “the world’s computer” network have risen a total of 110% over the last month.

Certainly not moving as fast as Ripple’s XRP tokens but some would argue that that’s a good thing. As anyone working on an Ethereum based project will tell you, a stable gradually inclining price per Ether is the optimal situation for this network.

Wishing you an amazing weekend!

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