GMT EIGHT - OPPORTUNITIES IN CHINA

US Stock Market Move | Alibaba Group Holding Limited Sponsored ADR (BABA.US) rose more than 3%, Aliyun announced price increase.

On Thursday, Alibaba (BABA.US) rose more than 3%, to $138.18.

The Dow Jones opened up 0.1%, the S&P 500 rose 0.1%, and the Nasdaq rose 0.1%.

Oracle rose 4.1% and announced a partnership with AWS to expand in the field of cloud networking. Paint manufacturer PPG rose 8.6% and announced a 20% price increase for all products globally. Abbott Laboratories fell 3.8% as its performance guidance fell short of expectations. Allbirds fell 15.0% as the sneaker manufacturer shifted its focus to AI, with a surge of over 8 times in trading yesterday. American TV shopping giant QVC Group plummeted 67.8% and officially filed for bankruptcy protection.

Congo launches the "national trusteeship" model: Nearly 10,000 tons of cobalt will be extracted by 2026, shifting the global cobalt price "center of volatility" upwards?

The Democratic Republic of the Congo's national mining regulatory authority said on Thursday that the country has established strategic reserves of cobalt and other key minerals.

The US has launched an action codenamed "Economic Wrath" against Iran.

On April 16th, local time, US Secretary of Defense Esper said in a press conference that the US Department of the Treasury is initiating an operation codenamed "Maximum Economic Pressure" to impose "maximum economic pressure" on Iran.

In the United States, the initial claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending April 11th were 207,000, lower than the expected 215,000. The previous value was revised from 219,000 to 218,000.

Sichuan launches a special research on the cost and benefit of leading enterprises in the pig industry.

In order to understand the production and operation of leading pig enterprises in Sichuan Province, explore the establishment of a special cost-profit investigation mechanism for leading pig enterprises, and serve the high-quality development of the pig industry, from mid-March to early April 2026, the Cost Investigation and Supervision Bureau of Sichuan Province conducted special investigations at several leading pig enterprises such as New Hope Liuhe, Dekang Group, and Southwest Wen's. The investigation included discussions, field visits, and other forms to have in-depth exchanges on topics such as optimizing pig production capacity, industrial chain layout, intelligent breeding, cost reduction and efficiency improvement, understand the transmission of rising prices of feed raw materials to pig breeding and the difficulties faced by enterprises in production and operation; The establishment of a special cost-profit investigation mechanism for leading pig enterprises, explaining the purpose of the investigation, the scope, and the setting of investigation indicators, and listening to the intentions, actual needs, and opinions of the enterprises. Sichuan Province will take this special investigation as an opportunity to solidly promote the special investigation of the cost-profit of leading pig enterprises, strengthen data analysis, timely reflect the operation of the pig industry, and provide high-quality data support for pig market regulation, stable industry development, and ensuring the supply of people's livelihood.

Ganfeng Lithium: It is expected that the net profit for the first quarter of 2026 will be between 1.6 billion and 2.1 billion, turning losses into profits year-on-year.

Ganfeng Lithium announced that it is expected to have a net profit of 16-21 billion yuan in the first quarter of 2026, compared to a loss of 356 million yuan in the same period last year. During the reporting period, benefiting from the rapid development of the global new energy industry and strong growth in demand for lithium salt from downstream customers, the company's sales prices of lithium salt products have increased significantly compared to the same period last year. In addition, with the release of production capacity of the company's lithium resource projects, the company's cost structure has been continuously optimized. In addition, with the continuous growth of the power battery and energy storage market, the production and sales volume of the lithium battery sector have significantly increased, resulting in a year-on-year increase in the company's operating performance.

Ministry of Industry and Information Technology: During the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, key core standards for the automotive industry will be developed at an accelerated pace.

Today, it was learned from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, China will promote and lead the high-quality development of the automobile industry through a series of standardization measures. On the 16th, the new National Automobile Standardization Technical Committee was established in Beijing. The relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, China will accelerate the development of key core standards for the automobile industry, fully leveraging the leading role of standards. In addition, during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, the leading role of standards in the automobile industry will also help improve the level of product quality. This includes accelerating the revision of standards such as extreme environmental adaptability of automobiles, cycle life of power batteries, energy consumption limits for new energy vehicles, and electromagnetic environmental adaptability. Furthermore, standards must also guide the innovative application of key technologies. Acceleration of the construction of standard systems in frontier areas such as solid-state batteries and automotive artificial intelligence, promotion of standards such as megawatt-level charging, intelligent chassis, and wide-angle car seats.

Live pig futures contracts rose 4% intraday, now at 11,145.00 yuan.

Hong Kong stock market midday report: Hang Seng Index up 1.38%, Hang Seng Technology Index up 2.98%

Hong Kong stocks closed at midday, with the Hang Seng Index up 1.38% and the Hang Seng Technology Index up 2.98%. The Hang Seng Stock Connect ETF rose 1.42%, while the Hong Kong Stock Connect Technology ETF increased by 2.01%. In terms of sectors, the semiconductor products and equipment and durable consumer goods sectors saw the biggest gains, while hotel and resort REITs and construction materials sectors saw the biggest losses. In terms of individual stocks, Sige New Energy rose by 83.53%, Longpan Technology by 22.31%, Birun Technology by 21.41%, Dipu Technology by 19.43%, and Tianshu Zhixin by 14.66%. On the other hand, Guoxia Technology fell by 14.96%, Guoquan by 14.15%, Lanshi Technology by 14.14%, Guofu Quantum by 11.56%, and Xuanzhu Biotech-B by 7.88%.

Spot silver's intraday increase has expanded to 2.00%, now trading at $80.54 per ounce.

The trading volume of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets exceeded 1 trillion yuan, a decrease of 120.4 billion yuan compared to the previous day.

Hedge fund Elliott disclosed a position in Da Jin Industrial, causing the stock price to soar 14%, the largest increase since 2009.

Daikin Industries encountered strong buying in the Tokyo stock market, with its stock price surging 14% in Thursday's early trading, marking the largest intraday gain since 2009.

The Shenzhen Component Index rose by 1.00% to close at 14643.858 points; the Shanghai Composite Index rose by 0.39% to close at 4042.724 points; the ChiNext Index rose by 1.62% to close at 3572.072 points.

Ignore the noise of war! "Wall Street Number Crunchers" are calling for technology stocks to dominate. The clarion call for a new bull market has sounded.

After going through a series of initial violent sell-offs, it seems that the investment power of Wall Street institutions is now keeping these war-related noises at bay.

Two-week surge of 200%! Avis Budget Group, Inc. (CAR.US) epic short squeeze followed by another showdown between the bulls and bears: the short interest ratio of outstanding shares has risen to 58%

Although Avis stock price surged over 200% in the 10 trading days up to Tuesday, causing short sellers to suffer nearly $2.5 billion in market value losses, short positions are still continuing to rise.

Spot silver rose 2% intraday and is now trading at $80.51 per ounce.

The direction of foreign exchange trading has changed! The halo of the US dollar as a safe haven is fading, and expectations of depreciation are regaining control of the market.

Due to the US-Iran ceasefire weakening the safe-haven demand that previously supported the US dollar, international investors are increasing their efforts to hedge against the risk of US dollar depreciation. As of April 10, investors' hedging ratio against the US dollar rose to 63%, the highest level since the same period in 2024.

Federal Reserve Beige Book: US-Iran war exacerbates uncertainty, labor market enters "hire and fire" mode

The latest release of the Fed's Beige Book shows that the US-Iran war has quickly become a major source of uncertainty facing business operations, affecting key decisions such as hiring, pricing, and capital expenditures.

Federal Reserve officials warned of inflation risks and said that the central bank may remain on hold for an extended period of time.

Federal Reserve officials have recently made intensive statements, emphasizing that high oil prices and continuous supply shocks may keep inflation high, thereby limiting the space for monetary policy to shift.

White House: Optimistic about Kevin Warsh "on time" taking over as Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Sell computing power rather than sell shoes! Allbirds (BIRD.US) "transformed into AI" overnight, with its stock price skyrocketing over 400%. Why is the market buying into it?

"Silicon Valley God Shoes" Allbirds enters the GPU computing power rental track.

Contemporary Amperex Technology (03750) achieved a net profit attributable to shareholders of 20.738 billion yuan in the first quarter, an increase of 48.52% year-on-year.

Contemporary Amperex Technology Co., Ltd. (03750) announced that in the first quarter of 2026, the operating income was 1291.31 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52.45%; the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 207.38 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 48.52%; and the basic earnings per share was 4.58 yuan.

The Dow rose 0.03% at the opening, the Nasdaq rose 0.21%, and the S&P 500 rose 0.15%. Star tech stocks Microsoft rose 1.24%, Tesla rose 0.72%, and Meta Platforms rose 0.68%. The Nasdaq China Golden Dragon Index fell 0.2%, with NIO falling 3.15% and XPeng Group falling 3.13%.

National Bureau of Statistics: Intends to explore new trading models such as word element trading.

The National Bureau of Statistics is soliciting public opinions on the "Implementation Plan for Promoting the Construction of High-Quality Data Sets in Industries". It proposes to innovate the business model of industry high-quality data sets, improve the long-term operation mechanism of data sets, encourage data sets to be listed for trading in data circulation service agencies such as data exchanges, develop diverse service forms such as "subscription model", "market model", "customized model", etc., and promote the business model to evolve from selling basic data packages to calling application programming interfaces, model-based solutions, and full-stack services. Explore new trading models such as word element trading, build a data set value system based on quantifiable and pricable word elements.

National Bureau of Statistics: Plans to cultivate a group of leading enterprises in data labeling, unicorn enterprises, and gazelle enterprises.

The National Bureau of Statistics solicits public opinions on the "Implementation Plan for Promoting the Construction of High-Quality Data Sets in the Industry". The draft for soliciting opinions proposes continuously promoting the pilot testing of data labeling. It guides the first seven cities tasked with the pilot testing of data labeling to continuously strengthen the data labeling industry. It lays out a phased plan to establish a number of innovative data labeling pilot zones in regions with strong innovative capabilities, good development foundations, and unique industrial features. It orderly guides regions with the necessary conditions to carry out pilot zone construction in a targeted manner to avoid following the crowd, prevent homogenization and low-level redundant construction, promote close coordination between the upstream and downstream of the data labeling industry chain, and form industrial agglomeration effects. It nurtures a group of leading data labeling companies, unicorns, and gazelle enterprises to strengthen the data labeling industry.

The Shanghai Stock Exchange will launch new medium-term options and quarterly futures, expanding its stock index dividend product line.

CATL: RMB 69.57 cash dividend per 10 shares

Ningde Times announced that the company's 2025 A-share equity distribution plan is as follows: based on the existing total A-share capital of 4.408 billion shares, excluding repurchased shares of 4.376 billion shares, a cash dividend of RMB 69.57 will be distributed to all shareholders for every 10 shares held. The equity registration date is April 21, 2026, with the ex-dividend date and cash dividend payment date set for April 22. The total amount of this dividend is approximately RMB 30.445 billion. There will be no capital reserve fund converted into share capital or bonus shares issued.

Alibaba Cloud: Adjusts the service prices for some MU model units on the large model service platform Bai Lian.

Aliyun announcement: In order to continue to ensure the stable supply of underlying hardware, improve the quality of platform operation and maintenance services, and respond to changes in the cost of computing power in the market, we will make moderate adjustments to the service prices of some MU model units. The product affected is the large model service platform "Bailian", with price increases ranging from 2% to 7%.

Market news: The US and Iran have reached a "principled" consensus on extending the ceasefire.

OLED version of iPad Air may be released next year.

According to South Korean media ETNEWS, Apple will launch an OLED version of the iPad Air in the first half of 2027, with industry insiders believing that the release date will be in March or May. This means that in the future, only the standard digital series of the iPad product line will continue to use LCD display panels.

The experimental spacecraft has completed multiple key technology verifications in orbit.

Journalists learned today from the Innovation Academy of Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences that on March 30, 2026 at 19:00, China's independently developed light boat test spacecraft was successfully launched into orbit. It has completed the initial flight control test, actively raised to a 600-kilometer orbit to conduct long-term trials, marking a significant breakthrough in China's new generation of low-cost cargo spacecraft technology verification.

Eurozone industrial output in February month-on-month increased by 0.4%, higher than the expected 0.3%, and the previous value was revised from -1.50% to -0.8%. Eurozone industrial output in February year-on-year decreased by 0.6%, slightly better than the expected -1%, and the previous value was revised from -1.20% to -1.10%.

Hong Kong Exchange (00388) Chen Yiting: Extending trading hours is the trend, but may not be suitable for Hong Kong stocks.

HKEX (00388) CEO Charles Li attended the HSBC Global Investment Summit in 2026 and expressed that although extending trading hours is inevitably becoming a trend and is also what investors are currently pursuing, it may not be suitable for the Hong Kong stock market, so careful consideration is necessary.

"Qiushi" magazine publishes an important article by General Secretary Xi Jinping on promoting nationwide reading and constructing a society of literary refinement.

The AI investment boom has triggered an explosion in equipment demand, and ASML Holding NV ADR (ASML.US) has raised its 2026 sales forecast to a maximum of 40 billion euros.

Global spending on artificial intelligence is surging, driving demand for advanced chip manufacturing equipment, ASML announced on Wednesday that it has raised its full-year sales forecast.

Live pig consecutive main contract rose 5% intraday, now reported at 10,860.00 yuan.

The early morning closing of commodities futures.

Silver rose continuously by 5.95%, tin by 3.44%, coke by 3.41%, xylene by 2.95%, butadiene rubber by 2.91%, live pigs by 2.90%, and benzene by 2.74%.

As the US and Iran restart negotiations, Trump says the Iranian conflict is "close to an end".

The U.S. President Trump said in an interview with American media on the 14th that the conflict with Iran is "coming to an end."

HumanX Conference Observation: AI intelligent entities' investments are soaring, UBS claims OpenAI and Anthropic are transforming into enterprise IT budget "devourers".

The autonomous execution of various tedious and complex tasks by AI intelligent agents (AI proxies) is highly likely to be the ultimate trend in AI applications in the next decade. The emergence of AI intelligent agents signifies that artificial intelligence is evolving from an information-assisting tool to a highly intelligent productivity tool.

The trading volume of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets exceeded 1 trillion yuan, an increase of 76.6 billion yuan compared to the same time the previous day.

HK Stock Market Move | The science and technology stocks opened higher across the board, driving the HEX index to open more than 2% higher. The cooling of geopolitical risks is expected to reverse pessimistic expectations.

The technology stocks on the Science and Technology Board all opened higher, driving the Hang Seng Technology Index up more than 2%. As for the constituent stocks, as of the time of writing, JD.com Group-SW (09618) rose 5.98% to HK$122.3, Baidu Group-SW (09888) rose 4.86% to HK$116.5, XPeng Motors-W (09868) rose 4.04% to HK$69.5, and Alibaba-W (09988) rose 4.02% to HK$129.5.

Growth Enterprise Index hits new high since June 19, 2015.

The ChiNext index continued to strengthen, opening higher by over 1%, breaking through the 3576.12 stage high set on July 22, 2021, and reaching a new high since June 19, 2015.

Wall Street begins to block out the noise of the war! AI computing power and data center electricity are taking advantage of the "counterattack trend".

The top traders on Wall Street are currently unconcerned about the negative situation in the Middle East, opting to continue buying stocks; institutional investors are the driving force behind the current stock market recovery.

WTI crude oil fell 4% intraday, now trading at $87.61 per barrel.

The Israel-Lebanon Washington talks lasted for over two hours.

On the 14th local time, according to personnel from the Israeli Embassy in the United States, the talks between Lebanon and Israel in Washington have ended after more than two hours. Representatives from the Israeli and Lebanese governments held direct talks in the US capital of Washington on the 14th. It is reported that Israel and Lebanon have not established diplomatic relations, and this meeting is the "first direct meeting between non-military personnel of the two countries in decades." US Secretary of State Pompeo met with delegations from both Israel and Lebanon at the State Department and attended the meeting held at the State Department. The Israeli and Lebanese delegations were led by Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yehiel Leiter and Lebanese Ambassador to the United States Naada Hamad Muawad. US Ambassador to Lebanon Michele Issa and State Department advisor Michael Niedermayer also participated in the talks.

The confirmation hearing for Powell's nomination as chairman of the Federal Reserve is scheduled for April 21st at 10:00 am.

Spot gold breaks through $4840 per ounce, up 2.11% intraday.

Wang Yi held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov.

On the 14th, Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Minister of Foreign Affairs, held talks with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov in Beijing. Wang Yi stated that in the face of a complex and changing external environment, under the personal care and strategic guidance of President Xi Jinping and President Putin, the China-Russia relationship "will not be obscured by floating clouds" and cooperation in various fields will remain strong. Both sides should promote the China-Russia strategic cooperation partnership and mutually beneficial cooperation in various fields to a higher level. Lavrov stated that Russia is willing to continue close high-level exchanges with China, deepen practical cooperation, maintain coordination on the multilateral stage, defend national interests, and jointly uphold international system security and stability. The two sides communicated on the preparation for the meeting of the two leaders within the year and exchanged in-depth views on the US-Iran conflict, the Asia-Pacific situation, the crisis in Ukraine, and other issues.

In March, the annual US PPI was 4%, lower than the expected 4.6% and higher than the previous value of 3.40%. The monthly US PPI in March was 0.5%, lower than the expected 1.1% and revised down from the previous value of 0.7% to 0.5%. The annual US core PPI in March was 3.8%, lower than the expected 4.1% and revised down from the previous value of 3.9% to 3.8%. The monthly US core PPI in March was 0.1%, lower than the expected 0.5% and revised down from the previous value of 0.5% to 0.3%.

Latest

10 m ago

Intel (INTC.O) announced on Thursday that it has hired Samsung's senior factory expert Shawn Han to support the development of its foundry business. The company stated that Shawn Han has over 10 years of experience in the field of commercial wafer foundry, starting in 1996 working on chip manufacturing technology. Under the leadership of CEO Chen Liwu, Intel is seeking to revitalize its manufacturing business after years of operational issues. Intel's foundry division is focused on attracting large customers for its next-generation 14A process.

17 m ago

Intel hires senior professional Shawn Han from Samsung's chip manufacturing sector to assist with Intel's wafer factory project.

21 m ago

WTI May crude oil futures closed at $94.69 per barrel. NYMEX May natural gas futures closed at $2.6470 per million British thermal units. NYMEX May gasoline futures closed at $3.1637 per gallon, and NYMEX May heating oil futures closed at $3.8329 per gallon.

22 m ago

The President of the Central Bank of Peru stated that it is premature to raise interest rates due to the factors of the war.

22 m ago

Intel (INTC.O): has hired Samsung semiconductor manufacturing industry veteran Shawn Han to assist in the development of its foundry business.

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