The system of round has been deliberately chosen by the EOS team to spread out the issue of tokens and give smaller buyer the opportunity to buy in the ICO instead of solely having access to tokens via the 1st ICO round, together with big whales, or on the 2ndary markets when the EOS tokens will be available on exchanges.
What you see, is that the first round is filling up with contributions already. Unless I am mistaken, a lot more contributions can still be expected for round 0 (1st 5 day round) as there are a couple of exchanges that have collected ETH from users with the purposes to obtain EOS in the ICO. So expect the price of EOS to jump within the next days as 100,000s of extra ETH are contributed to the 1st round.
Buying in the 2nd and further rounds has the benefit that buying pressure may have waned already (whales and others wanting to get in right away; sorry, I'm guilty....) and in those 2nd and further rounds, the exchanges will carry (basically synthetic) EOS tokens for exchange which provides for a market and thus price forming of EOS tokens. If the exchanges dictated a price much lower than the price paid in the hype of the 1st round, you can expect to pick up EOS tokens at much lower prices in the further rounds.
But it could also be the other way: if exchanges dictate much higher prices for EOS tokes than paid in the 1st round, you can expect higher prices to be achieved in the further rounds of the ICO.
So the best thing is probably to wait and see whether the price paid in the ICO will also be paid on the exchanges. If you have FOMO, you could also spend a little in the 1st round (if you do not consider the price prohibitive yet) and save some for further rounds. Should EOS go rocket and never come back, you at least already have some skin in this game.
Personally, I expect some moment of slump in EOS price during the year. This could be otherwise if market sentiment stays excellent (and/or we get a repeat of the 2013 bubbles) or EOS team or third parties break the news soon with fantastic news/developments.
This is the game we are playing and the reason the EOS team spread out the ICO over a year. Everyone gets a fair chance to participate but no one gets a price guarantee (re issue price or value development).
Pretty difficult to grasp but (I think) a sensible ICO structure from my perspective.
Thank you very much for this detailed description. This allows me to be more aware of the investment in EOS. Choosing a long ICO seems to be good for small investors. However, I still do not understand why the site shows that for the later periods there is already money invested. Now we have a period of 0, during which the fees should be deposited into the first account. Should other periods not indicate zero now? Can you relate to this phenomenon? I wonder if there is a way to invest in advance into all periods, wouldn't it give opportunity to the big whales to invest into every pool at once during one day? Or maybe as you mentioned due to the risk of EOS price going rocket it doesn't make any sense.
You can commit to future rounds already. Doing so could serve a strategy of spreading price risk while not having to follow this ICO actively anymore.
This explains a lot :) When thinking about it, there is rather positive aspect of providing this posibility. I think I will also invest some amount now and again later, but not in advance. Thank you :) Now it is time for me to observe the ICO. I hope your investment will bring a lot of profit to you.