emilyvuong

📍NFP in April again exceeds forecasts
📌U.S. non-farm payrolls in April increased by +115K jobs (far above the forecast of only +65K).
March was revised from +178K to +185K, but February was revised downward from -133K to -156K.
The total for the 2 months was adjusted lower than the previous report by -16K.
📌Job gains came mainly from defense and service sectors, such as education - healthcare +46K, transportation - warehousing +30K, retail +22K, and entertainment - lodging +14K.
More cyclical-sensitive sectors weakened: finance -11K, government -9K, manufacturing -2K.
Government

💥Micheal Burry - the legendary short seller says the market is resembling the period a few months before the dot-com bubble burst

📍First time in history, SPX call options in ONE DAY reached $2.6T
📌The total notional value of traded call options reached approximately $2.6 trillion. Among them, 0DTE volume accounts for about 59%, meaning most of the money is going into short-term options.
📌However, this $2.6T is not real money used to buy stocks but the notional value of options linked to the SPX index -> it is speculative.
📌When many people buy calls, market makers are the sellers of calls, so they have to hedge their risk.
If market makers are in a short gamma position, the more SPX rises, the more they have

📍EU still at an impasse in trade negotiations with the US
📌 Previously, Trump warned that a 25% tariff could be imposed on European cars if the EU does not implement the transatlantic trade agreement.
📌 According to the preliminary agreement in July, the EU will remove tariffs on American industrial goods. In return, the US will impose a 15% tariff cap on most EU goods.
📌 The process remains stalled due to ongoing disputes over protection clauses if the US continues to impose new tariffs.
=> If negotiations continue to be deadlocked, the European auto industry could be the first ta

📍ADP April: U.S. private employment increases for the 10th consecutive month
📌U.S. private sector +109K jobs in April, below the forecast of 120K, but still the largest increase since 01/2025. March data was slightly revised from +62K to +61K.
-> This is the 10th consecutive month of growth, indicating the U.S. labor market remains stable, even though the pace of hiring has cooled.
📌 Services continue to be the main support +94K, only professional/business services -8K. The professional/business services group typically reflects demand for office, consulting, administrative, and cycli

The reason Vietnam will continue to take a stronger stance on intellectual property rights
The USTR just announced the Special 301 Report 2026, in which Vietnam is classified as a Priority Foreign Country - PFC, the highest warning level for IP protection and enforcement.
For the first time in 13 years, the U.S. has placed a trade partner in this group (the last was Ukraine).
USTR provides the basis for ranking Vietnam on this list:
- Not sufficiently and consistently enforcing online copyright violations
- Not adequately addressing counterfeit goods and trademark infringement
- In

💥This is not a meme coin chart but the KOSPI Index of South Korea.
The dot-com bubble is not old enough for comparison.
The entire index has increased by 220% in less than 12 months.

📍JOLTS March: The biggest hiring wave since COVID
📌 Job openings reached 6.866M - close to forecasts. February was revised upward from 6.882M to 6.922M. The job opening rate decreased from 4.2% to 4.1%.
📌 The most notable point is in hiring:
- The number of hires in March surged to 5.554M, an increase of +655K MoM. The hiring rate rose from 3.1% to 3.5%.
- This is the strongest increase since COVID. Excluding COVID factors, March 2026 is the month with the strongest hiring in JOLTS history.
📌 The sectors driving increased hiring include: Transportation: +108K, Professional servic

🇺🇸The first U.S. ship departs from Hormuz
📌 Maersk confirms that the Alliance Fairfax vessel—an automobile carrier flying the U.S. flag—has left the Persian Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz under the escort of the U.S. military.
📌 CENTCOM says that 2 U.S.-flagged commercial ships successfully transited Hormuz as part of the Project Freedom operation. Maersk has only confirmed 1 ship so far; the identity of the other has not been disclosed.
📌 The ships transited safely with no damage, and the crew were not injured.
📌 Iran is facing increasingly fewer options—responding with enough st

U.S. oil exports just hit a record high of 6.4 million barrels per day.
Meanwhile, U.S. oil imports continue to decline to record lows.

📍Tether bought an additional 6 tons of gold in Q1/2026, raising the total holdings to a record 132 tons, worth approximately $19.8 billion.
Previously, Tether purchased an additional +21 tons of gold in Q4/2025 and +26 tons in Q3/2025. In just 12 months, Tether's gold holdings have doubled.
In terms of value, this figure has nearly tripled.
In 2025, Tether bought more gold than all central banks except Poland.
In Q1/2026 alone, only four central banks bought more gold than Tether: Poland, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and China.
Tether is directly competing with central banks in the gold

📍Inflation PCE rises sharply for the first time since 2023
📌 Headline PCE increases +0.7% MoM and +3.5% YoY - the highest since May 2023.
- The strongest increase in nearly 3 years causes Wall Street to reconsider the story of “disinflation moving in the right direction.”
- The main contributor to the rise is gasoline and energy goods. Spending on gasoline and other energy goods increased to $81.3 billion - the highest among March expenditure categories.
📌 Core PCE is also quite bad: up +0.3% MoM and +3.2% YoY - exactly as expected but higher than the previous month.
📌 Supercore

📌 The BoJ can intervene in the exchange rate, Yen experiences the most volatility in 3 years
Previously, a weak Yen was seen as a trade-off to support exports, and although the BoJ occasionally issued warnings, it maintained low interest rates to protect growth and the bond market.
When USD/JPY surpassed 160, the line between supporting the economy and fueling inflation was blurred.
Japan relies heavily on imported energy, so when Brent rose to $125 while the Yen continued to depreciate, the cost shock was doubled: oil became more expensive in USD, and even more so when converted to Yen

One year ago, Anthropic was valued at around $61.5 billion, now it has risen to nearly $1 billion. Since the beginning of 2024, Anthropic's value has increased by approximately 50 times.
Anthropic has become the fastest value-creating company in modern technology history.
In an era where AI foundation models attract capital, talent, customers, and redefine software productivity, SaaS, services, and software outsourcing are all being revalued. This is why FPT's stock also plummeted uncontrollably.
The future story no longer lies in ordinary personnel but returns to ideas.

The battle in Iran has, up to this point, burned $25B of the U.S.—a figure reported to the U.S. Congress by Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon’s financial controller.

📍The Fed maintains interest rates at 3.5%-3.75%, but the FOMC minutes are more hawkish than the previous meeting.
📌The Fed keeps interest rates steady in the 3.5% - 3.75% range, as expected by the market. The FOMC minutes include some adjustments:
- Last time, the Fed said inflation was still "somewhat elevated."
- This time, the Fed changed it to “elevated.”
- The Fed states that inflation has increased partly due to recent global energy prices.
-> The Fed admits that oil prices have an impact on inflation.
📌A clearer stance on the Middle East,
- Last time, the Fed said the i

🇺🇸Thom Tillis speaks out in support of Kevin Warsh becoming Fed Chair
📌 The DOJ has just announced that it is ending its investigation into Powell for "abuse of power" ( excessive coordination with the Ministry of Finance), "monetary policy mismanagement" ( keeping interest rates low for too long) and not supervising Fed officials trading securities during QE 21-22.
This investigation is just a legal ploy to force Powell to step down.
📌 Thom Tillis is a member of the Banking Committee (Uỷ ban ngân hàng), which is one of the groups that decides on individuals put forward for Fed appoi

The Ethereum Foundation just unstaked $48.9M $ETH.
Likely unstaking to sell.

📌OpenAI GPT-5.5 & DeepSeek V4 launched simultaneously
🇺🇸OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 (23/4/2026)
- GPT-5.5 codenamed "Spud," called by Greg Brockman "a new layer of intelligence aimed at more agentic and intuitive computing."
- GPT 5.5 is strongest in agentic tasks: programming, computer use, office work, and scientific research.
- API price: $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens. The Pro version is much more expensive: $30 and $180.
- GPT-5.5 Thinking leads most agentic tests (Terminal-Bench, OSWorld, CyberGym), while GPT-5.5 Pro excels in BrowseComp (90.1%) a