Breakfast | Bank of America Merrill Lynch believes NVIDIA is not expensive and can rise by 21%, the U.S. House of Representatives passes the TikTok Act.

Good morning! A great day starts with making money.

Overnight Market Update

S&P 500 and Nasdaq fell, Tesla dropped over 4%, Chinese concept stocks outperformed the market, Bitcoin surged past $73,000 to hit a new all-time high

The rebound of tech giants lasted only one day, with the US stock market pressured again by the decline in tech stocks. Only the Dow Jones Index closed higher. Among the seven major tech stocks, only Alphabet-C-C-C and Amazon did not fall during the trading day.

Tesla dropped by 4.5%, Apple by 1.2%, while Alphabet-C-C-C and Amazon maintained an upward trend throughout the day. Alphabet-C-C-C rose by 0.8% for the fifth consecutive day, and Amazon rose for the second day. Nvidia fell by 1.1%, TSMC by 1.6%, AMD by nearly 4%, and Intel by over 4%.

The rise in Bitcoin drove most cryptocurrency-related stocks higher. Microstrategy surged by nearly 11%, Bitcoin mining company CleanSpark rose by nearly 3.8%, Riot Platforms by nearly 1%, while Coinbase fell by 1.7%.

Chinese concept stocks index rose for the fourth consecutive trading day, outperforming the market for four days. Pinduoduo rose by over 3%, with nearly an 11% cumulative increase in the past three trading days. BIDU-SW and JD.com rose by over 2%, NetEase by nearly 2%, Alibaba by nearly 0.4%, Tencent by nearly 0.2%, NIO Inc. USD OV fell by over 4%, Li Auto by over 3%, XPeng by 3%, and Bilibili by over 1%.

Biopharmaceutical company Spruce Biosciences Inc. plummeted by over 75% after hours, as the company announced that the results of the Cahmelia-203 study did not meet the primary endpoint.

Blue Chips and Hot Stocks

Yonhap News Agency: Alibaba plans to invest $1.1 billion in South Korea over the next three years to establish a logistics center and expand its business.

Elon Musk confirms Tesla's German factory has resumed operations.

Bank of America: Nvidia's stock is really not expensive, with the target price raised from $925 to $1,100, indicating a 21% upside potential from Wednesday's closing price. Nvidia's valuation and ownership are still attractive compared to semiconductor/IT peers. The NTM valuation (37 times) is still lower than ChatGPT's valuation at its launch in 2022 (44 times).

Tesla's target price lowered by two investment banks in a day, being referred to as a "growth company without growth"

UBS lowered Tesla's target price from $225 to $165, maintaining a neutral rating. Previously, Wells Fargo referred to Tesla as a "growth company without growth," downgrading its rating to sell with the target price lowered from $200 to $125. Since March, six major institutions have conducted rating analyses on Tesla, with four lowering the target price, one raising it, and one maintaining it. The average target price for Tesla among 120 institutions is $203.

US House of Representatives passes TikTok Act

The US House of Representatives voted on the morning of the 13th to pass an unreasonable bill called the "Protecting Americans from Foreign App Control Act" (H.R.7521), requiring ByteDance to divest control of TikTok, otherwise TikTok could face a ban in the US. The bill still needs to be passed by the U.S. Senate before it can be submitted to President Joe Biden for approval.

TikTok Issues Statement on U.S. House Vote

The legislation will ban TikTok in the United States. "We hope the Senate can consider the facts, listen to the voters, and understand the impact of this bill on the economy, 7 million small businesses, and the 170 million Americans who use TikTok." In 2023, TikTok contributed $24 billion to the U.S. GDP, supporting 224,000 jobs.

Apple has made a major concession, allowing EU users to download apps from websites.

NIO Inc. USD OV will hold a Long-Life Battery Strategy Communication Meeting on March 14th at 13:30.

Lei Jun: Xiaomi's car reservations at stores increase by over 100,000 people per day.

Yibin Wuliangye Co., Ltd. issued a statement stating that they have recently received inquiries from multiple consumers about the authenticity of Wuliangye products purchased at low prices from the "Pinduoduo" platform. After verification by the company, it was confirmed that the Wuliangye products sold by multiple stores on the platform are counterfeit, seriously damaging the company's reputation and consumer rights.

Pinduoduo will release its fourth-quarter earnings report on March 20th.

Meituan will release its fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 earnings report on March 22nd.

Media: Disney is internally scouting for a CEO successor, focusing on four department heads.

Media: U.S. electric vehicle startup Fisker plans to file for bankruptcy, with sales of $273 million last year and debts exceeding $1 billion. The company's stock price dropped by 50% in after-hours trading.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board: The video footage of removing the door plug from the Boeing 737 MAX 9 was overwritten, and the loss of these records will make the NTSB's investigation more complex.

Alphabet's autonomous driving company Waymo, under Google's parent company Alphabet-C-C-C, will start offering fully autonomous ride-hailing services in Los Angeles from Thursday.

Toyota surpasses Takeda Pharmaceutical to become the largest short-selling stock in the Asia-Pacific region.

AIA Group's new business value increased by 33% to $4.034 billion in 2023, with double-digit growth in new business value in Mainland China, Hong Kong, ASEAN (excluding Vietnam), and India; annualized new premiums rose by 45% to a record high of $7.65 billion; the new business value profit margin for the year was 52.6%, increasing in the second half compared to the first half.

Chips and Artificial Intelligence

Sora Core Team: Sora will not be open to the public in the short term.

Market news: Microsoft's security AI assistant will be launched on April 1st, aiming to help cybersecurity professionals track hackers more easily.

Samsung Electronics reportedly plans to negotiate NAND flash prices with downstream manufacturers, aiming for a 15-20% price increase.

The European Parliament has passed the "Artificial Intelligence Act," which may set the tone for the development of artificial intelligence in the West.

ByteDance invests in storage chip maker Xinyuan Semiconductor.

Cerebras Systems has released the third-generation wafer-scale AI accelerator chip "WSE-3" (Wafer Scale Engine 3), with the number of transistors increasing to 40 trillion, the number of AI cores reaching 900,000, and a cache capacity of 44GB. Peak AI computing power reaches 125 PFlops, equivalent to 1.25 trillion floating-point calculations per second, comparable to top supercomputers. With four parallel processors, it can fine-tune 700 billion parameters in a day and support up to 2048 interconnections, enabling the training of Llama's 700 billion parameters in just one day.

Cryptocurrency

Media: The U.S. is investigating Hamas' use of cryptocurrency before October 7 last year, with the U.S. Treasury Department looking into $165 million in cryptocurrency transactions related to Hamas.

The Wall Street Journal: Binance employees are still detained in Nigeria.

MicroStrategy plans to issue $500 million in convertible senior notes and will use the net proceeds to purchase more Bitcoin.

Macro: A Global Perspective

Sources reveal that if he wins the November presidential election, Trump has discussed the possibility of appointing hedge fund giant John Paulson as Treasury Secretary and has held a series of meetings with potential cabinet picks.

Fitch Ratings: It is expected that the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank will each cut interest rates three times by the end of the year, totaling a 75 basis point reduction.

The U.S. will provide a record loan for the lithium project of Lithium Americas in Nevada.

Nikkei News: The Bank of Japan will discuss exiting the negative interest rate policy next week.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang conducted research in Beijing, emphasizing that artificial intelligence is a crucial engine for developing new quality productivity.

The National Development and Reform Commission of China: will successively formulate and implement specific action plans for the "Promotion of Large-scale Equipment Renewal and Consumer Goods Trade-In" program, continuously improving supporting measures.

J.P. Morgan: Gold is expected to reach $2500 within the year, leading the way for commodities.