Never Tell Me The Odds

After raising $1.7 Billion from private investors, Pavel and Nikolai Durov have called off their much anticipated ICO.

Their initial goal was to raise $1.2 Billion, so it seems they now have enough money to develop their Telegram Open Network without the need for regulatory headaches involved in an ICO.

Critics have stated that this project has become a mess but looking at the numbers it seems to me like a smashing success. They've already raised more money than the next 9 most successful ICOs to date.

Telegram has been in hot water lately after refusing to capitulate to government agencies and has been banned in some parts of the globe. With the massive amount of money they've raised, the Durov brothers should now have enough capital to build a decentralized solution.

The initial ~200 investors in the pre-sale however, might be a bit out of luck but in my experiance there's no such thing as luck. No ICO means a poor distribution of tokens, which isn't very good for any economic ecosystem. 

Today's Highlights

• Miracles in our Times
• May the Force
• NFP Today

Traditional Markets

The US markets managed a miraculous recovery yesterday. After a shaky start, the market quickly reached it's lowest point since early April. Yet by mid-day in New York investors had rushed in to buy the lows and though the Nasdaq and SPX500 registered slight losses the Dow Jones actually closed in green, just by 5 points.

This is an incredible sign of resilience from a market that has recently been plagued by concerns of a trade war, data regulation, tightening monetary policy, abnormally high valuations, and more. An even further very positive sign is the Bullish Hammer candle that was formed on yesterday's daily chart of the Dow Jones.

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Volatility has seemingly stabilized over the last two weeks, albeit at slightly elevated levels.

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Though the rout may not be over yet and it's certainly possible that we'll see the indexes at new lows, yesterdays action is a clear sign that the markets are not about to give in to their anger. 

May the Force

There's an old saying in the markets, "sell in May and go away."

Well, that hasn't worked out very well over the last few years. Especially as we've been in a raging bull market since 2009. Monthly losses are extremely rare these days. Over the last year, there have been exactly three including February and March.

For Theresa May, the month hasn't always been so great though. Last year, she lost a lot of momentum leading into the snap elections that she'd called on April 20th. The local elections in the UK last night were similarly lackluster. Some wins and some gains for all parties, except the UK Independence party, which is seemingly useless now.

In the meantime, the GBPUSD is inching closer and closer to it's severe test point of 1.35. Next week, we'll hear from the Bank of England, who may shake things up as well. There's always a bigger fish.

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Jobs report today

Those who have been in the markets for a while know that the NFP jobs report in the United States is usually the number one market moving event each month. Today will be no different.

However, the focus has shifted a bit in the last few months away from the headline figure. The number of jobs added to the US economy has been rather stable over the last few years. April's report was a bit weak but March was strong so it all evens out.

What's been more impactful lately is the gain in employee's hourly wages. Even though the figure is usually pretty close to the analyst estimates (brown bar), even a small difference can be significant.

In this graph you can see the last blue bar (April) came out exactly as analysts predicted. February's number came out 1% above estimates, which seemed to be the catalyst for the stock sell off at that time, whereas the March figure was 1% below estimates, what seemed to smooth things out.

Whatever the outcome, be sure to minimize your risk before the weekend. Trump's dream team is expected to conduct heavy negotiations with China and we could get some significant updates later tonight or even tomorrowwhile the markets are closed.

Wishing you a fantastic weekend. May the Force be with you!