Breakfast | US stocks and bonds both hit Tesla, with the stock plummeting during trading, while Wall Street giants are bullish on NVIDIA, pushing it to $800.

Good morning! A wonderful day starts with making money.

Overnight Market Update

Powell once again poured cold water on the market's expectations of a rate cut in March, causing the probability of a rate cut by the Fed in March to almost drop to zero during the trading day. The three major US stock indices, which had been rising for several days, collectively fell back.

Leading tech stocks had mixed performances. Tesla fell nearly 3.7% for the second consecutive day. Meta fell 3.3%, dropping from the closing historical high it had reached in the previous two days; Amazon fell nearly 0.9%; Microsoft fell nearly 1.4%; Apple rose nearly 1%; Alphabet-C rose nearly 1% for the third consecutive day.

Overall, chip stocks continued to rise against the market. NVIDIA rose by about 4.8%, reaching a new closing historical high for three consecutive trading days; AMD rose by 9.5%, and Qualcomm rose by over 1%. NXP Semiconductors rose by 2.8%, and after-hours announcement of fourth-quarter earnings and revenue exceeded expectations, causing the stock to rise by nearly 7% after hours.

Super Micro Computer (SMCI) rose by over 14%, setting a new closing historical high; Palantir reported higher-than-expected fourth-quarter revenue and achieved annual profitability for the first time, stating that the demand for AI is strong, causing the stock to rise by over 10% after hours. Estée Lauder soared by 12%, with intraday gains reaching the highest level since 2011. Catalent rose by 9.7%.

Most popular Chinese stocks rebounded. Alibaba rose nearly 4%, JD.com rose nearly 3%, Tencent rose over 2%, NetEase and Bilibili rose over 1%, BIDU-SW rose 0.8%, XPeng fell nearly 4%, Nio fell by about 3%, Pinduoduo fell nearly 3%, New Oriental fell over 2%, and Li Auto fell over 1%.

Blue-chip Stocks and Hot Stocks

Goldman Sachs and Bank of America raised their target price for NVIDIA to $800, suggesting a potential further increase of 22%.

The price of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card has soared in the Asian market, with some regions seeing a 60% increase.

Bezos plans to sell up to 50 million shares of Amazon.

German enterprise software provider SAP has removed Tesla from its list of automotive suppliers.

Market news: If Apple Vision Pro users lose their passwords, they must return them to Apple for handling.

OpenAI announced that ChatGPT has officially landed on Apple Vision Pro, and users can download the application from the visionOS App Store.

Market news: Blackstone Group is considering the possibility of bidding for L'Occitane, and has conducted early due diligence on the company.

Novartis will acquire German late-stage biopharmaceutical company MorphoSys AG for €68 per share (€2.7 billion in cash).

Novo Nordisk will spend $11 billion to acquire three production plants, and major shareholder Novo Holdings has agreed to acquire the asset owner Catalent for $16.5 billion.

Boeing announced that about 50 undelivered 737 MAX aircraft will need to be reworked due to two holes being drilled incorrectly on the fuselage, which may cause delivery delays in the near future.

Bank of America's profits declined last year, and CEO Moynihan's compensation was reduced by 3% to $29 million.

SF Express and Yonghui announced their cooperation: postal services will be set up at supermarket service counters. JD Group announced that starting from February 1st, the average annual salary of over 20,000 frontline customer service employees at JD will increase by more than 30%.

BIDU-SWCreate AI Developer Conference is officially scheduled for April 16th to 17th.

Will Douyu and Huya merge? Douyu responded: Not true, there is business cooperation but no merger plan.

Former President of China Merchants Bank, Tian Huiyu, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve in the first instance.

Volkswagen China: The new Volkswagen brand vehicle developed in cooperation with XPeng will be put into production in Hefei in 2026.

Estée Lauder: Will lay off 3%-5% of employees, and the layoff and restructuring plan is expected to increase profits by USD 1.1-1.4 billion.

Estée Lauder's net sales in the second quarter were USD 4.28 billion, a YoY decrease of 7%; net profit was USD 313 million, compared to USD 394 million in the same period last year; diluted earnings per share were USD 0.87, compared to USD 1.09 in the same period last year.

McDonald's fourth-quarter revenue was USD 6.4062 billion, an increase of 8% YoY; net profit was USD 2.039 billion, an increase of 7% YoY; diluted earnings per share were USD 2.8, compared to USD 2.59 in the same period last year.

NXP Semiconductors' adjusted earnings per share in the fourth quarter were USD 3.71, expected USD 3.65; revenue was USD 3.42 billion, expected USD 3.43 billion; net profit was USD 697 million, expected USD 781 million. It is expected that the adjusted earnings per share in the first quarter of 2024 will be USD 2.97-3.38, and analysts expect USD 3.17.

Snap plans to reduce its global full-time workforce by nearly 10%, which is expected to generate pre-tax expenses of USD 55-75 million.

IPO Opportunities

Luxury car manufacturer Lotus Cars accelerates its listing process in the US through a reverse merger, with an estimated valuation of around USD 6 billion.

Middle Eastern grocery chain giant Lulu Group International is considering an IPO, seeking to raise at least USD 1 billion.

Hyundai Motor is evaluating its Indian subsidiary's listing plan, planning to raise USD 3.3-5.6 billion.

Market news: Reddit's revenue is expected to grow by about 20% in 2023 before its IPO; it is expected to have an adjusted EBITDA loss of USD 69 million in 2023, and achieve profitability in the fourth quarter; Reddit is considering submitting an IPO application as soon as possible, possibly this month.

Macro: Taking You Around the World

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will testify before the House Committee on Financial Services on the Financial Stability Oversight Council report for 2023 at 23:00 Beijing time today.

Hong Kong's largest AI fraud case! Deepfake replaces the "CFO of the UK" and swindles HKD 200 million from the company.

China's Ministry of Commerce: Preparing to promote the introduction of "Regulations on the Standardization and Promotion of Cross-border Data Flow".

China's National Development and Reform Commission: Will promote the introduction of a more aggressive action plan to attract and utilize foreign investment.

After announcing the first batch of "white-listed" real estate projects in multiple regions across the country, many real estate companies, including Country Garden, Sunac, Greenland Group, Yuexiu Group, Xuhui Group, and Shimao Group, have successively disclosed the progress of their projects being included in the "white list".

China Securities Regulatory Commission and the Ministry of Public Security conducted joint research and judgment and discovered multiple cases of suspected market manipulation and malicious short-selling. Among them, a certain illegal group controlled over 100 securities accounts to manipulate a certain stock, with a cumulative sales of CNY 2.7 billion, and an illegal profit of approximately CNY 130 million. A certain investment institution's controlling shareholder manipulated the prices of more than 20 stocks, illegally profiting 140 million yuan from the transactions.