Hi Everybody,
Some call it the Woodstock of stocks. The Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting draws a huge crowd where everyone listens closely to what the oracle has to say.
He really spilled the beans this year, reassuring investors of his plans to continue the business after he dies as well as reflecting on some of his biggest mistakes.
The one that seems to stick out most in today’s headlines is that he blew it big time when it comes to tech. He bought way too much IBM and not nearly enough Amazon and Google.
You see, what comes naturally to some people simply doesn’t compute with others and vice versa, that’s why everybody invests in their own way. Investors like Warren Buffet represent the old world. We can already see the tech-tonic shift happening.
At this moment, half of the world’s top ten richest people made their money in the technology sector.
Today’s Highlights
- Relief from the Relief Rally
- Ethereum Flash Crash
- $50 Billion Baby!!
Please note: All data, figures & graphs are valid as of May 8th. All trading carries risk. Only risk capital you can afford to lose.
Market Overview
Congratulations to the people of France who have resoundingly voted to block fascism. It may sound like the obvious thing to do but given the world’s collective choices lately, even this choice seemed too close to a reality for comfort. The world thanks you for your level headed decision.
The results were no surprise to the financial markets of course. We’ve been seeing extreme risk on sentiment for the past two weeks straight, ever since the first round of these elections.
Stock indices and the Euro have been rallying, while gold and the Yen have been dropping.
The Japanese Nikkei 225 rose 2.4% this morning, and European markets are expected to open strong.
The EURUSD opened the week with a sharp gap up but the gap has been completely covered already…
The current market attitude is most clearly reflected in the price of gold. After being beaten for half a month, it’s as if the pressure has now been lifted and it has begun to rise.
Oil has been doing its own thing lately. On Friday morning there was a bit of a flash crash that saw the price as low as $43 a barrel before recovering. As OPEC and Shale continue their long drawn out game of tug of war, the markets watch nervously. Still fresh in our minds was the market selloff of January 2016, which was largely attributed to low oil prices.
The SL Killer
Many cryptotraders woke up to a bit of a shock this morning. It seems that a large exchange site called Kraken was hit hard by a hacker attack.
For some reason, the attack didn’t affect very many cryptocurrencies, only Ethereum and just for about 2 minutes. On the longer term chart, it just looks like a big ol nasty spike that managed to take out a bunch of stop losses.
Party Time!!
Despite Kraken’s downtime and the above flash crash, digital currencies are rising steadily. This morning, the total market cap of all cryptocurrencies blew past the $50 Billion milestone and now stands at $51.3 Billion.
Not so long ago it crossed $30B!
This graph shows just the past 24 hours, where we can observe another $5 Billion day.
On Thursday, May 4th we noted a rise of $1 Billion per day over the previous 10 days. In fact, since Thursday the rate of growth has accelerated to approximately $3 Billion per day.
The reasons for this amount of growth is quite clear. Mankind is looking at an economy that increasingly relies on technology for our day to day lives. As we mentioned above, most of the BIG money made in the last few decades was all from technological advancements.
The current banking system is outdated. Why should a bank to bank transfer take 5 business days when we can zing money across the globe in a matter of minutes?
Why do we need to lug around a wallet and credit card every time we leave the house when our smartphone is able to do just about everything else?
Trade with others. Join eToro community and use experience of other traders!
The total amount of money in the world is far more than $1 Quadrillion. If the blockchain is the future of the internet and the future of the economy, then $50 Billion is not nearly enough to support it and will need to rise sharply over the next decade.
Best regards,
Mati Greenspan
Senior Market Analyst
