News and analysis

OMG Network (OMG) is seeing a rise of 5.2% to $0.217 this week, an impressive rebound given the recent market correction. Earlier in the week, the token experienced a significant drop of 20.0% to $0.167 on Monday but managed to completely erase these losses by the end of the day. In contrast, Bitcoin (BTC) remains 5.2% below the week's opening, hovering around $55,280 per coin.

Activity on the OMG Network is increasing, largely due to its early adoption of the Plasma protocol as a blockchain scaling solution. The protocol demonstrated significant scaling capabilities in July, and OMG Network has been actively working to drive token adoption in Asia.

From a technical perspective, OMG needs to climb above $0.250 to open the path towards $0.500, showcasing its considerable upside potential.

The Nikkei 225 (J225), a major Japanese stock market gauge, appears to be significantly oversold. The benchmark has plummeted by 27.8% from its July high of 42,515 points, hitting a low of 30,705 points on August 5, the lowest since October 31, 2023. This rapid decline has been driven by panic sell-offs. Even if the downward trend continues in the mid-term, the benchmark is likely to experience at least a dead cat bounce.

Currently, the entry point seems appropriate as J225 has reached its trend support. My target range is 37,000-38,000 points, aligning with the average of the ascending channel and a horizontal support level, marking the starting point of the recent decline. A stop-loss could be set at 29,500 points.

IOTA (IOT) experienced a significant drop of 15.0%, falling to $0.1108 on Monday, marking the largest decline since April 13. At one point during the day, the token's loss reached 21.2%. Despite this sharp decline, the IOTA project has been on a positive trajectory with notable developments. The latest IOTA 2.0 network, launched in June, now operates on Proof-of-Stake principles. Additionally, the IOTA EVM ecosystem, which was approved by the community in August, has allocated 172,000 tokens to improve liquidity. These advancements had previously supported the token's price.

However, the overall risk-off sentiment in the markets, driven by fears of a global recession, has erased these gains and sent token prices into a free fall. If the support at $0.1000 fails to hold, prices may decline further to $0.0500 or even lower. Conversely, if the support holds, a strong rebound could occur, potentially pushing prices up to $0.2000.

"What's the buzz? Tell me what's a-happening. What's the buzz? Tell me what's happening" (c) That's a line from 'Jesus Christ Superstar' soundtrack, as I just got the song stuck in my head when watching this kind of a bloodbath in the markets. And so, "Don't you mind about the future? Don't you try to think ahead?" Of course, we tried and we did. But not enough, as can be seen. Well, I personally sold all my stake in NVIDIA weeks ago, and shared this news with you, folks, running a risk of being ridiculed, even though NVIDIA continued to rise much higher. Sporadically, I reduced my share in other chip- and AI-related stocks to take some profit on the way, yet at the same time I also was guilty of adding extra volumes to some of my favourites like Dell, Micron Technology, Broadcom and AMD expecting even greater outcome from these roaring tigers of the cloudy big data revolution. Anyway, I don't regret a thing too much, as I am still sure most of them just entered into a stage of deeper and faster correction, no more than that, as I see the current happenings as not a fatal collapse of the whole uptrend or something similar. No and no, far from it. But I have missed an instant, when it was reasonable to run away and to convert most of my invested money into cash for a while, like many of you missed it, surely. Lulled by a linear climb to the top, all quiet and calm uptrend strategists are now gone with the stormy wind as the S&P 500 drop approaches 5,100.

Now NVIDIA is going to lose double digits to drop at least to $95 in the pre-market trading today, probably leading Broadcom to below $130, AMD to below $125 for the first time in 2024, Dell and Micron to below $90, and so on and so forth. I don't have Apple or Tesla in my portfolio, so I don't care about their price drops, and I expected Microsoft at lower levels to buy, and so I am even happy it may lose more weight now. But it still doesn't seem like the right moment to buy any of the listed stocks today or maybe tomorrow, isn't it? There are not so many catchers of falling knives around. Most of the crowd would like to get them later off the ground. O.K., let's "save tomorrow for tomorrow, think about today instead". And so, "I could give you facts and figures", without giving accurate "plans and forecasts" right at the moment and without responding to a crowd's tough question of "When do we ride into Jerusalem?", as it's too early to answer.

First of all, I don't think that weaker U.S. jobs data to ignite fears of recession should be blamed. Last Friday was not Good Friday or judgement day for Wall Street, it was just a normal day. The risk of recession is still limited, and the same crowd recently dreamed about smaller non-farm payrolls in order to make the Federal Reserve cut its rates sooner than later. And now, we got this opportunity, what's wrong with it? Yet, last Wednesday actually was the day that supplied our pork. The Bank of Japan raised its national interest rates by some minor 0.15%, from its near-zero 0.10% to its still near zero 0.25%, but for the first time since... I can't even remember... since 2008, I believe. The Bank of Japan also halved its bond purchase program to start saying good-bye cheap funding money for the country's stock market rally, which was mostly unfounded unlike Wall Street rally. A volt-free, de-energized Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 immediately started to sink, yet didn't send an S.O.S. message for anybody until now, it plummeted and bumped its head only this Monday when it lost a tremendous 13.47% in one trading session to waste all of its ballooned 2024 achievements.

Of course, this acts in a complicated combination with still overheated US techs. The giants' fall already caused correction moves, but the Japanese domino effect on the American, European and global markets was not long in coming, already late Friday night, when the truth of approaching Japanese collapse became clear to big investment houses. And they hurried to compose an urban myth of US recession with supposedly a 0.5% Fed rate cut being nearly inevitable to avoid killing the US and world's economy. Yet, the root of all evil on the markets is not there, as I feel. For the S&P 500, an attempt of touching levels below 5,000, which is possible, is not a fatal error. So, when dust eventually settles somehow on Asia markets, with the Japanese Yen and the Chinese Yuan being on the ride, the U.S. Treasury yields would stop falling, and so the Wall Street indexes and chip stocks would quickly rebound as investors' money simply has no other way and refuse where to hide from all this world's troubles. At that time, all of us will have another chance to join the Mary Magdalene's sweet aria: "Try not to get worried, try not to turn on to problems that upset you, oh... Don't you know, everything's alright, yes, everything's fine, and let the world turn without you tonight..."