Market Insights: Mar 19th, 2024

U.S. Stock Market Performance:

• This week marks the decision week for the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), with the market rapidly scaling back bets on a Federal Reserve rate cut in June.
• The U.S. stock market saw gains of over 1% at the opening, with Tesla surging over 6%, leading the pack among large tech stocks.
• Nvidia's stock price opened 5% higher and closed up 0.7%, driving the upward trend in chip stocks for the afternoon. Despite a narrowing of gains, the performance was still impressive.

Global Commodity Price Trends:

• U.S. bond yields returned to the year's highs, with oil prices gaining about 2%, reaching a new high for the past five months.
• Gold prices rebounded after hitting a new low for the week, while copper prices in London briefly surpassed $9,160, reaching an 11-month high.
• The U.S. dollar rallied around a two-week high, the Japanese yen turned from a decline to an increase at one point, and Bitcoin fell below $67,000.

Public Fund Market Data:

• With the market warming up, public fund market data has reached a new high. Data disclosed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission for February 2024 shows that the total scale, total shares, and total number of products of public funds have all reached historical highs.

Capital Market Financing Trends:

• Since the beginning of this year, the tightening trend in capital market financing has not diminished, with the Shenzhen Stock Exchange significantly tightening reviews for IPOs and refinancing. The latest data released by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange shows that the number of initial offerings and refinancing applications accepted in January this year has decreased compared to the same period last year.

AI Technology Development:

• At the 2024 GTC conference, Jensen Huang introduced a new generation of AI chip and software, dubbed the “strongest AI chip” Blackwell B200 GPU, which has 208 billion transistors and can deliver up to 20 petaflops of FP4 performance.

Financial Market Regulation:

• Starting March 18, new rules for securities lending and borrowing officially transitioned from “T+0” to “T+1” to strengthen regulation and standardize market order.
• The Hong Kong Monetary Authority proposed to raise a range of financial institution license fees, including a 29% increase in bank license fees. This move is expected to generate about 146 million HKD in total revenue for the government each year. Other fees adjustments range from 5% to 29%, to adapt to market changes and maintain financial system stability.

Corporate Regulation and Penalties:

• On the evening of March 18, ST Xinhai announced that it had received a decision from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange to terminate its stock listing. This made ST Xinhai the first case of 2024 to be forcibly delisted due to serious violations.
• On the evening of March 18, Evergrande Real Estate Group announced that the China Securities Regulatory Commission had completed its investigation into the company's alleged violation of bond information disclosure laws and regulations. According to the announcement, the CSRC plans to impose administrative penalties on Evergrande Real Estate and several executives, including a fine of 4.175 billion yuan and an order for rectification, and to take lifetime securities market bans against Xu Jiayin, Xia Haijun, and others.

Performance of Major Global Stock Indices:

• Today, the FTSE China A50 index futures opened down 0.3%. The Hong Kong Hang Seng index opened down 0.65%. The Nikkei 225 index opened down 0.3%. The South Korean KOSPI index opened down 0.5%.
• Overnight, the three major U.S. stock indices rose, with the Dow up 0.2%, at 38,790.43 points; the Nasdaq up 0.82%, at 16,103.45 points; and the S&P 500 up 0.63%, at 5,149.42 points. Major European stock indices were down.