Breakfast | Retail investors band together as concept stocks soar, OpenAI launches faster and cheaper AI models

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Overnight Morning Market

The New York Fed announced on Monday that the April U.S. consumer expectations for inflation and housing prices accelerated, bringing bad news of rising inflation and dampening prospects for interest rate cuts. U.S. stocks were limited in their rise ahead of the heavyweight CPI release on Wednesday, with only the Nasdaq closing higher. The Dow ended its longest winning streak since December 19, 2023, with a slight decline of 0.02% in the S&P 500 index.

Tesla rose by 2%, Meta fell by 1.7%, Amazon dropped nearly 0.5%, Apple rose by nearly 1.8%, Alphabet rose by nearly 0.4%, Nvidia rose by nearly 0.6%, Arm rose by 7.7%, and TSMC's U.S. stock fell by 1.9%.

Keith Gill, who rose to fame in 2021 by calling on short-term traders in the U.S. stock market to short squeeze, returned to social media X after three years. The core stock of the short squeeze battle, GameStop, surged by nearly 120% intraday, triggering four circuit breakers and closing up by 74%. Several other retail investor favorite stocks also surged, with AMC up by 50%, marking the largest intraday gain since 2021. Koss rose by 36.7%. Reddit rose by nearly 9%, and the retail investor-favored brokerage Robinhood rose by nearly 5%.

Novavax Pharmaceuticals surged by 52% intraday, closing nearly 99% higher last Friday.

Chinese concept stocks outperformed the broader market, with ZEEKR rising by nearly 2.8%, Nio up by 6.7%, XPeng up by 4.7%, Li Auto up by 1.2%, Bilibili up by over 12%, Alibaba up by 5.7%, Tencent Music up by nearly 3.5%, JD.com up by nearly 5%, Pinduoduo up by over 3%, Baidu up by nearly 2.9%, and NetEase up by nearly 1%.

Blue Chips and Hot Stocks

Alibaba initiated positions in Zhihu in the first quarter, liquidated 10 million shares of Bilibili and 8.43 million shares of ZWJ Group, and bought over 1.7 million shares to initiate positions in Zhihu. The holdings of XPeng and Weibo remained unchanged. By the end of the first quarter, Alibaba's total holdings of U.S. stocks decreased from $421 million to $154 million.

Apple to Launch Vision Pro Outside the U.S. for the First Time

Apple is preparing to launch the Vision Pro outside the U.S. for the first time after the global developer conference next month to test whether this $3,499 VR headset has broader appeal. The company is training employees from Germany, France, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and China.

Keith Gill, the leader of the "retail investors vs. Wall Street" movement, returned to social media after three years, causing stocks like GME and AMC to surge by over 100%. GME surged by over 11% after hours, and AMC surged by 21% after hours.

Short video platform Rumble has filed a lawsuit against Google and its parent company Alphabet, claiming over $1 billion in compensation owed due to loss of advertising revenue.

Google: Starting from June 2024, Google will restrict the use of certain features for suspended accounts.

Market News: Tesla has rehired some of the supercharging station employees who were dismissed last month, and Tesla's charging director Max de Zegher has also returned to the companyMicrosoft will face EU antitrust charges regarding Microsoft Teams.

Market expects that Temu, a cross-border e-commerce platform under Pinduoduo, will shift its focus to acquiring European users as its sales from the US this year are less than one-third.

Miniso plans to open approximately 600 stores overseas this year.

Country Garden Group: Will be unable to fulfill all payment obligations under its foreign debt

Due to liquidity pressure, the company has not yet paid the relevant interest on the 2020 notes. The grace period for interest payment on the notes expires on May 13, 2024, and it is expected that the company will be unable to fulfill all payment obligations under its foreign debt. The company will maintain active communication with creditors and actively explore the best solutions to achieve long-term sustainable development to safeguard the interests of all stakeholders.

Chips and Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI releases a new flagship AI model called GPT-4o: Real-time reasoning for audio, visual, and text

The new large language model GPT-4o is trained on a large amount of data from the internet, excelling in handling text and audio, and supporting 50 languages. The new model will be available to all users. GPT-4o will provide voice and text input and output capabilities. In terms of API usage, GPT-4o is priced at half of GPT-4-turbo and has twice the speed of GPT-4-turbo. A desktop version ChatGPT will be launched.

Meta's new AI device in full swing: Exploring the development of AI earphones with cameras, capable of translation

Meta is exploring AI-assisted earphones with cameras, the product design is not yet finalized, and there are still technical and privacy issues to be resolved.

Virtual Currency

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) accuses major cryptocurrency brokerage firms of illegally providing US customers with access to digital asset derivative trading platforms.

Startups

Anthropic introduces chatbots in Europe to increase revenue

Anthropic has launched the Claude chatbot and subscription plan in Europe, with cloud computing partners Amazon and Google helping it comply with stricter EU regulations on enterprise data usage.

IPO Opportunities

Lao Pu Gold Co., Ltd. has submitted listing documents to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, with China International Capital Corporation International as the exclusive sponsor.

Haidilao's overseas business subsidiary, SuperHi, plans to list on Nasdaq, issuing approximately 2.69 million American Depositary Shares (ADS) under the code "HDL". Entities controlled by Daniel Zhang will collectively own 45.66% of the company's issued shares.

Macro: Taking You Around the World

Federal Reserve Board member Jefferson: The downward momentum of inflation has weakened, and maintaining the policy rate in a tightening range is appropriate.

Goldman Sachs: Optimistic about the long-term prospects of the US stock market, with a high likelihood of continued upward movement

High valuations indicate that investors have absorbed a lot of enthusiasm for the stock market, but this does not mean that selling should begin. The S&P 500 index has exceeded Goldman Sachs' year-end target of 5200 points, but the fundamental backdrop of stock prices remains "very good." They are optimistic about the future stock market as US companies have strong earnings and are confident in the path of inflation easingJP Morgan's Chief Market Strategist Kolanovic: It's not worth taking on stock risk now

Due to high interest rates, weakening growth, and meager potential returns, it is difficult to justify buying stocks now. The market is "prematurely" returning to the narrative of a soft landing. However, with macroeconomic uncertainties, the stock market is entering a challenging seasonal period in the year, with inflation likely to remain high, profit margins under pressure, and high-position portfolios facing challenges.

Investment bank Stifel: US stocks to plummet significantly in the coming months

The S&P 500 index is expected to fall to around 4750 points in the second or third quarter, with a pullback of about 10% or 500 points. The recent economic slowdown in the United States has largely eased price pressures, but current economic activity remains strong enough, with inflation expected to be well above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, contrary to the views of many economists.

Media: US Senators seek billions of dollars for AI research and regulation

A bipartisan group of senators, including Senate Majority Leader Schumer, will unveil a long-awaited "roadmap" for AI regulation, directing Congress to invest billions of dollars in the development of this technology while addressing its potential risks.

China and the US to hold first government-to-government dialogue on artificial intelligence

China Association of Automobile Manufacturers responds to the possibility of the US imposing new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles: typical trade protectionism.

The four parties negotiating to form the next Dutch government have agreed to abolish the 15% stock buyback tax, which will take effect from next year