Breakfast | Biden withdraws from the US presidential race! Market focuses on Tesla and Google earnings reports on Tuesday

Good morning! A great day starts with making money.

Breaking News

US President Biden announces withdrawal from the 2024 presidential election, fully supporting Harris to receive the presidential nominee.

Biden stated on social media that he originally intended to seek re-election, but for the best interests of the Democratic Party and the United States, he has decided to withdraw from the presidential race and will focus on fulfilling his duties as president during his term. He will fully support and endorse Vice President Harris to receive the Democratic Party's presidential nominee.

In response, Trump stated that defeating Harris is easier than defeating Biden.

Previously, news of Biden's withdrawal put pressure on the US stock market. Once the dust settles, the US stock market may begin to stabilize.

Focus of the Week

Last week, investors accelerated their exodus from tech stocks, with the "Tech Seven Sisters" all experiencing a cumulative weekly decline.

Among them, NVIDIA fell over 8.7% in a week, marking its worst performance in three months; CrowdStrike, the global leader in network security that triggered a global technical failure, fell 11% on Friday, its worst performance in nearly two years.

Key focuses for this week:

1. Macro Data: China's July LPR quotation on Monday, US second-quarter GDP on Thursday, US June core PCE price index on Friday;

2. Tech Stock Earnings Reports: Google and Tesla will announce their second-quarter reports on Tuesday;

3. Social Focus: The 2024 Paris Olympics, the 33rd Summer Olympic Games, will open on July 26, 2024, and close on August 11.

Blue Chips and Hot Stocks

On Friday, CrowdStrike's software update issue caused a Microsoft Windows system crash, leading to a global IT network outage. Multiple banks, funds, asset managers, and exchanges were affected, impacting the global supply chain, with air transport possibly taking weeks to recover; Microsoft estimated on Saturday that the incident affected 8.5 million Windows devices, and experts believe it may take weeks to repair.

Google and Tesla will release their earnings reports on July 23. Analysts predict that with the support of generative AI, Google is expected to continue its strong growth from Q1, with cloud revenue expected to increase by 25% year-on-year in Q2. Tesla's Q2 gross margin may fall short of expectations, with investors focusing on the latest news on FSD, Robotaxi, and energy storage.

Lei Jun responds to all aspects of Xiaomi's car: starting from being sanctioned by the US, test driving over 170 vehicles, obtaining a racing license plate, and expecting to achieve the annual delivery target of 100,000 vehicles ahead of schedule in November.

Reports suggest that Meta is tightening its funding for the metaverse department.

Buffett reduces his holdings in Bank of America, seen as an important adjustment for the "Stock God" investor portfolio. Starting from the day after Bank of America released its second-quarter financial report, from July 17 to 19, Berkshire Hathaway sold approximately $1.48 billion worth of around 34 million shares of Bank of America.

Eli Lilly's tirzepatide weight loss injection has been approved for long-term weight management indications in China, posing a strong challenge to Novo Nordisk's semaglutide.

Chips and Artificial Intelligence

TSMC's financial report indicates industry trends, starting semiconductor foundry 2.0. TSMC defines semiconductor foundry 2.0 to include packaging, testing, mask manufacturing, and other IDMs (excluding storage), expanding the market space from the original $115 billion to $250 billion, doubling the market space Citigroup claims that OpenAI will become Broadcom's fourth largest customer, with the new AI chips expected to be delivered in the second half of next year.

Macro: Taking You Around the World

China has issued the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensive Deepening Reform and Advancing China's Modernization," proposing more than 300 important reform measures. These include: accelerating the planning and construction of a new energy system, improving policies and measures for the consumption and regulation of new energy; exploring the gradual expansion of free education coverage; improving the national coordination system for basic endowment insurance, fully lifting the restrictions on household registration for employment-based insurance; exploring the establishment of a personal bankruptcy system; deepening financial and tax system reforms, appropriately expanding local tax management authority; and accelerating the establishment of a housing system that promotes both renting and purchasing.

Jim Rogers, the international investment guru who first predicted the U.S. subprime mortgage crisis, stated that there has been a large influx of new investors into the U.S. stock market recently. Coupled with decreasing market breadth and high debt levels, this indicates that the U.S. stock market is going through a bull market decline. He predicts that the U.S. stock market will return to a bear market by the end of this year at the earliest, and by next year at the latest