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09.01.2025
VeChain Is Suffering on Rising Borrowing Costs

VeChain (VET) has fallen 12.7% this week, trading at $0.0445, underperforming the broader cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin (BTC), the leading cryptocurrency, has declined by 5.6% to $93,220, with bearish momentum building as it approaches key support at $89,000-$91,000. This decline is largely attributed to tightening monetary conditions in the United States, which continue to weigh on risk assets. Investor confidence is further shaken by significant net outflows from spot BTC-ETFs, which lost $583 million on Wednesday, marking the second-largest single-day outflow on record.

If BTC falls below the critical support level of $89,000-$91,000, VeChain is likely to extend its losses, with prices potentially declining another 10% to $0.0400. A sustained drop in BTC could push VET even lower, towards $0.0300. Conversely, a strong rebound in BTC prices to the $100,000 level could drive VET back up to $0.0500, representing a recovery of approximately 12% from current levels.

06.02.2025
Perfect As the Enemy of Good

Here is the problem, which is nearly at a primary school level. A simple logical puzzle. A shopping street has two grocery stores. One of the stores is much more popular than the other. But both shops are full of customers every day. So both shops are raking in money. Sales output of a more popular store roughly doubled over the past year, from $14.5 billion to $30.8 billion - oh, yes, it's a very big shop - which led to tripling of its market value. Meanwhile, sales in the second store have already grown by 69%, albeit by its lower standards, namely from $2.3 billion to $3.9 billion. Please draw a conclusion, by what percentage the market value of the second store could increase, assuming that professional appraisers are rather objective. It seems ridiculous, but the correct answer is that the second store's market value lost 35% within the same year, and it even dropped by 50% from its peak price of the last spring. Holy Cow! That was a story of some failed expectations of mine. Since the big store is, of course, Nvidia, and the small one (and also, in fact, quite a prosperous marketplace) is Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). And their goods are not essential food, but chips for artificial intelligence (AI) related data centers, which are also in high demand.

Moreover, AMD shares reportedly tumbled 10% additionally on February 5, only because the firm's AI chip revenue failed to be exactly in line with elevated projections of Wall Street analyst pool, which somehow bet on a 80% pace of data centre growth to as much as $4.15 billion YoY. Okay, one might say that Nvidia's "store" sells 8 times more chips that everyone needs. And even remember that Nvidia chips are of better quality, that Nvidia occupies about 80% of global chip market share. Again, Nvidia's last quarter will be finally counted only by February 26, when Nvidia's financial report is scheduled, a month later than in AMD's case. Like most large investment houses, here I have provided growth metrics regarding the major data center segment, which is a proxy for the AI playground, where AMD struggles to compete with Nvidia. Well, AMD CEO Lisa Su admitted that her company's data center sales in the current quarter may go down about 7% from the just-ended quarter, but this announcement was exactly in line with an overall expected decline. Is it really such a big deal that AMD shareholders have to experience pain from seeing their chosen stock falling to a 14-month low, with further need for a 100% rally just to match last year's record prices?

The same Lisa Su declined to give the particular forecast for the company's AI chips, but she said that AMD expects "tens of billions" of dollars in sales "in the next couple of years". And I see no reason to doubt her words. AMD CEO added that the firm is now working to compete against Broadcom (AVGO) in collaborating with its customers like Meta and Microsoft to create custom AI chips for their purposes, as Broadcom helps its partners to design their own chips, contrary to mostly "off-the-shelf" processors by AMD and Nvidia. They know their weaknesses as opportunities for strengthening to work in that direction, so what's wrong with the market's adequacy of perception? Perfect Nvidia is the enemy of good AMD, according to the crowd's opinion. Besides AI chips, AMD is also one of the largest providers of personal computer chips. Until recently, this point was generally the source of their main income. Consumers continue to buy new PCs, which also can handle generative AI tasks, by the way.

Actually, AMD has been the only loss-making company in my large portfolio for a long time, so it even makes me smile now. At least, because it is only a matter of time before AMD's pogo stick ultimately uncoils to come loose. Record annual revenue and earnings have to entail recovering to record market value eventually. I am not sure this will happen in the first half of 2025, even though AMD forecasts its revenue rise between $6.8 billion and $7.4 billion for the current quarter, with the market consensus midpoint being slightly lower at $7.04 billion. If you don't believe me then analysts at Stifel are of the opinion that AMD is well positioned for AI compute and "It is likely" that some of its customers "are waiting for 325/350 systems, which should drive a much stronger second half". Again, the median estimate by the Wall Street's analyst pool was now declined to about $150 per share vs $166.5 before the last downside move, yet even $150 sounds much better compared to $112 on closing price this Wednesday or an intraday low at $106.56 during the last trading session. Anyway, there is a strong technical and psychological support zone near the round figure of $100, from where AMD stock had begun its cool ascension in late 2023.

14.01.2025
Merck Becomes Interesting to Be Added to a Portfolio

Merck & Co (MRK) stocks have shown signs of becoming a compelling buy opportunity. Over the past six months, the stock has been in a downtrend, declining 29.8% to $94.50 per share. However, since mid-November, MRK has demonstrated a reversal of momentum, rebounding by 10.0% to reach $104.87 on December 5. Following a brief pullback and consolidation period, the stock has retested the downtrend resistance and appears poised to continue its upward trajectory.

With prices currently positioned to target $110.00, this represents a potential 9-10% upside from the present levels. Setting a stop-loss at $93.50 aligns with a prudent risk management strategy, providing protection against further downside while allowing for upside potential. The recent consolidation phase further supports the case for a breakout, making this an attractive moment to consider initiating or adding to a position in MRK.

10.01.2025
Dollar Strength Is a Given

The very first slice of statistical data on business activity from the United States this year reaffirmed an almost clear irrelevance and even potential hurtfulness of any immediate steps towards further lowering interest rates on U.S. Dollar-nominated loans from a purely economic point of view. The ISM Manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index), based on polls compiled from executives in over 400 industrial companies in late December, came out at 49.3 points vs 48.4 a month ago and 48.2 in average analyst estimates. This showed that a slowdown was occurring at a slower or even insignificant pace, keeping inflation risks on the table, especially when the price component increased from 50.3 to 52.5 with a similar rate of increase in new orders. Meanwhile, non-manufacturing PMI came out at 54.1 on Tuesday, compared to 53.5 in analyst polls and 52.1 a month ago, with a contribution of business activity components even jumped to a surprising 58.2 against declining from 57.2 in November to only 53.7 in December.

In other words, the economy is not cooling, and is rather in a positive acceleration, which in turn may lead to a recovery in wage rises and therefore to higher demand pressure, which may be reflected soon in higher producer purchase and output prices. Doubts of the major U.S. financial regulator are understandable at this point after its triple rate cut from 5.5% to 4.5% in 2024. The Federal Reserve (Fed) will now pay closer attention not only to consumer inflation measures, but also to producer prices (PPI), which is just going to be released on coming Tuesday, January 14. And so, this will become the next reference point in the further U.S. Dollar’s trajectory. The Greenback index (DX) is picking up steam since reaching a new record high for the last two years at 109.35, with its temporary pullbacks being limited by a 107.50 support area that previously served as a strong multi-month technical resistance.

In this context, the British Pound (GBPUSD) updated its lows since November 2023 to touch 1.2237 on January 9, EURUSD feels quite comfortable within a range between 1.02 and 1.0450, which corresponds to its 2-year bottom, and having a bias towards a possible further decline. The Aussie (AUDUSD) is one-step away from taking the path for a breakthrough to a quite unknown territory of its 5-year lows that were last time recorded when the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 happened.

A varying extent of the American Dollar strength is surely data dependent as the market community is eagerly waiting for the U.S. job data later today. The average expectations on new Nonfarm Payrolls is just a bit above 150,000 vs 227,000 in early December 2024 and nearly 160,000 for the previous four months on average. However, any value close to 150,000, plus or minus 20,000, or any higher number, may be considered as another positive sign for the Greenback, following the ADP national employment report which contained only 122,000 on Wednesday. The oppressive nature of average hourly wage in its dynamics, +0.4% each time from September to December, also matters.

The protective quality of investing more funds into the U.S. Dollar and U.S. bonds against tariff threats is switched on anyway, based on more than a 95% chance for the Fed to keep rates on pause at its January 29 meeting, according to CME's FedWatch tool. Federal Reserve officials never go against a well-established market consensus, when it is almost unanimous, for not to rock the boat of relative market trend stability. The central bankers' reluctance to shift the Fed fund rates lower before mid-March, if not early May, continues to play in favour of short-term speculative transactions on the foreign exchange market, bearing in mind all the listed currency instruments. Some intraday volatility may take place, especially in the case of appearing an abnormal two-digit non-farm value, but not a change in overall direction.

14.01.2025
Tezos Is Seen Hodling above $1.200

Tezos (XTZ) has declined slightly by 0.2% this week, trading at $1.249, following Bitcoin’s (BTC) drop to $89,158, which triggered widespread altcoin sell-offs due to concerns of a potential further decline in BTC to $80,000. However, Bitcoin managed to hold above the critical support level at $89,000-$91,000, offering some relief to the broader crypto market.

Speculation about a shift in U.S. trade policy has provided additional support to crypto assets. Reports suggest the new U.S. administration may pursue a gradual increase in tariffs rather than an abrupt hike, which could help alleviate inflationary pressures and lead to a less aggressive monetary stance from the Federal Reserve.

This development is a positive signal for the cryptocurrency market and may help Tezos maintain its position above the key support level of $1.200.

Rafael Quintana Martinez
Money Manager de alto rendimiento, con una sólida formación académica, profesional y de campo. Más de 9 años de experiencia especializada en el comercio de mercados financieros internacionales. La devoción, la fiabilidad, la responsabilidad y la ética impulsan mi vida. Actualmente me desempeño como Analista Senior para Metadoro. https://metadoro.com/es https://mx.investing.com/members/contributors/235587671/ https://es.tradingview.com/chart/EURUSD/rE9gVips/
Maker Is Setting Stage for an Upside

Maker (MKR) is down 6.2% this week to $1,120, underperforming the broader crypto market, where Bitcoin (BTC) has gained 1.6% to $83,261. MKR surged by 39.6% to $1,599 in February, fuelled by strong market activity. Whale Alert recently reported a significant burn of MKR worth $156.7 million, a bold move that temporarily pushed prices above key resistance levels. However, a proper retest of the $1,000 support is necessary to confirm stability. If this level holds, the bullish scenario could regain momentum, making further upside the likely outcome.

443
IOTA Could Dive Further Before the Recovery

IOTA (IOT) is up 1.5% to $0.1774 this week, slightly outperforming Bitcoin (BTC), which has risen 0.8% to $82,500. Despite these gains, investor sentiment remains cautious, with speculation that BTC could drop to $73,000, where a significant number of margin traders’ stop-loss orders are concentrated. A decline of this magnitude—another 10% from current levels—could trigger further selling pressure, forcing retail investors to capitulate and allowing prices to fall even lower.

IOTA continues to trade below the $0.2000 support level, which is not yet a critical concern. However, the current technical setup suggests that a deeper decline to $0.1000 remains a possibility. Despite this downside risk, a mid-term recovery toward $0.3000 appears to be a reasonable upside target if market conditions improve.

339
Oracle Stands Proud Next to the Bloodbath

Investors saw the bloodbath in the U.S. stocks this Monday. The market’s volatile nature coupled with a long-term uptrend has led to losing nearly $1.7 trillion of capitalization on March 10. The S&P broad measure closed the day 2.7% lower, down 155 points, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 futures posted their worst single-day performance since September 2022, falling more than 4% to 19,118 during Asian hours the next morning. Of course, this was not an irreversible emergency call for dip buyers, yet further bullish demand has very quickly transformed itself into a pent-up force waiting until the proper time. The optimistic camp is still here but most brave guys preferred to retreat to the bushes, purely standing by with prudence, after they fled helter-skelter and scrambled away from a suddenly panicked sell-off.

Markets were reportedly spooked by fears over a potential recession, which sparked sharp declines on Wall Street following U.S. President Donald Trump's uncharacteristically evasive comments as he declined to rule out chances for the American economy to enter a recession this year. “I hate to predict things like that. There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big,” Trump literally said in an interview with Fox News that aired on the weekend, adding that the goal of his policy is “bringing wealth back to America", which is "a big thing", but taking "a little time". He later compounded the verbal damage on Air Force One by saying, “Who knows?”. According to CNN, "It was less what Trump said but how a president known for unshakeable certainty said it", but even those ill-wishers to Trump who immediately raised their voices that Trump "never told voters there might be a recession on the road to his new golden age", acknowledged in their editorial that "the latest recession panic may be fleeting". Monthly jobs report showed last Friday that the U.S. economy added an adequate number of 151,000 jobs in February, with the unemployment rate only slightly edging up to 4.1%.

What Trump has done with 25% tariffs against Mexico and Canada, even though partially frozen for a month, as well as doubling the rate of levies on Chinese goods to 20% and more threats to European imports, is fraught with retaliatory troubles for American manufacturers. Markets are rightly sceptical that Trump's team is able to quickly translate the tariff policy as a launching pad for negotiations with partner countries into solutions that will stabilize the stock market jumps. On the other hand, nothing has basically changed for the economy in the last few days, and so what happened is still more like a naturally emotional response, providing a useful release of excess steam, especially in overheated tech assets. In another interview with CNBC on Monday, Kevin Hassett, who is the head of Trump’s National Economic Council, tried to play down worries about the health of the economy: “What I think that what’s going to happen is the first quarter is going to squeak into the positive category, and then the second quarter is going to take off as everybody sees the reality of the tax cuts”, meaning an ambitious timetable for pushing a tax-cutting bill through Congress. Commerce secretary Howard Lutnick on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday also said “there’s going to be no recession in America”.

Last week, stock and crypto traders already faced a roller coaster, and just landed to lower levels right now. With the investing community additionally losing some confidence in the whole situation, the search for the ultimate bottom will continue, but we estimate that attractive levels could be located somewhere around 5,500 points in terms of the S&P 500. Moreover, not all popular tech stocks were ready to fall as rapidly as Tesla, which lost 15% of its value in one go. More quarterly earnings from key companies may sweeten the pill. Shares of Oracle initially revealed a 2% jump upward on the same day when everything else was falling, and the AI database business only later reluctantly retreated by 4% following all peers' decline. Oracle was promised to make a sizable $500 billion investment into a cloud data centres infrastructure project Stargate, in conjunction with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Japan’s SoftBank. Oracle CEO Safra Catz shared a vision that growing sales backlog will help drive as much as 15% of revenue growth in its fiscal 2026, aiming for $66 billion, to beat 12.6% of consensus analysts’ estimates. "We are on schedule to double our data center capacity this calendar year," Oracle's chair Larry Ellison added.

Oracle's cloud revenue in the last quarter rose 25% to $6.2 billion, with the total revenue being mostly in-line with forecasts after coming out at $14.13 billion, instead of average estimates of $14.39 billion. Oracle projected the current quarter's total revenue growth of 9-11% in constant currency, with cloud revenue rising 24 to 28%. Its CEOs reiterated plans of expansion in partnerships with NVIDIA and AMD. Oracle business collected $1.47 of adjusted profit per share, compared with analyst projections of $1.49 per share, to keep the same high level of $1.47 from the previous quarter. While Oracle shares are still trading below the key psychological $150 level, its price could slide lower by inertia of a broader sell-off in techs. However, targets around $200 for Oracle are worth keeping in mind.

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Rafael Quintana Martinez
Money Manager de alto rendimiento, con una sólida formación académica, profesional y de campo. Más de 9 años de experiencia especializada en el comercio de mercados financieros internacionales. La devoción, la fiabilidad, la responsabilidad y la ética impulsan mi vida. Actualmente me desempeño como Analista Senior para Metadoro. https://metadoro.com/es https://mx.investing.com/members/contributors/235587671/ https://es.tradingview.com/chart/EURUSD/rE9gVips/
Ontology Poised to Drift Down

Ontology (ONT) is down 2.5% to $0.1360 this week, slightly underperforming the broader crypto market, with Bitcoin (BTC) trading neutrally at $81,700. Cryptocurrencies are struggling alongside U.S. stocks as the Federal Reserve maintains a tight policy while the American economy continues to cool. Recession fears are pressuring markets, with the S&P 500 already down 9.5% from its peak of 6,147 points.

The newly established U.S. Federal crypto reserve could offer long-term market support, but investors need confidence that the current correction has ended. Until then, ONT is likely to drift further downward toward its support at $0.1000.

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