[market performance]

The midweek rally came to an abrupt end near the weekend, with all three major U. S. stock indexes falling sharply on Thursday. Geopolitical tensions and concerns about global growth have rekindled investor concerns about how long the longest bull market rally can last.

The Dow Jones index fell more than 450 points at most, while the NASDAQ fell nearly 2.5% at one point.

[hot news]

• Us officials said they had filed a complaint on Oct. 18 asking a WTO dispute settlement mechanism panel to intervene in international retaliation over Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, Reuters reported, referring to trading partners such as the European Union, Canada and Mexico. Accordingly, the EU, Canada and Mexico also plan to ask WTO, a dispute settlement body, to review 25 per cent steel import duties and 10 per cent aluminum import duties imposed by Mr Trump.

• In the draft statement of the Asia-Europe Summit held in Brussels, EU leaders said that it is very important to maintain an WTO-centered and rules-based multilateral trading system and to maintain an open economy. The EU hopes to win political support from Asian countries to combat US President Donald Trump's challenge to global trade rules, climate change and a nuclear deal with Iran.

• Quarles, a governor of the Federal Reserve, said the Fed can raise interest rates gradually before interest rates have risen to a restrictive level. He said Trump's criticism of Fed policy was "not unprecedented" and that the White House did not interfere with the Fed's independence. The Fed will continue to focus on its job. In addition, economists at Goldman Sachs Group said Goldman Sachs Group was still "comfortable" with the Fed's expectation that it would raise interest rates five times by the end of 2019 (three had previously been expected).

[China-listed stocks]

$Chinese Ceramics (CCCL.US) $At one point, it soared by about 250% to close by 105%. The maximum amplitude in the past two trading days is as high as 400%. However, the stock market is worth only $17 million, and the signs of manipulation and speculation in the past two days are extremely obvious.

Similar to Chinese ceramicsChina Pharmaceutical Holdings Limited (CPHI.US) $The largest intraday rise was more than 200%, and closed up 70%. Its latest market capitalization is only $19.6 million.

$BABA (BABA.US) $It closed down 4.13%.BABA invested 2 billion yuan in China's largest alcohol e-commerce platform 1919 on Thursday to support the company's offline expansion strategy.

$Tencent (ADR) (TCEHY.US) $It closed down 3.98% at US $35.01, which translates to HK $274.445, a discount of 2.33% to the latest HK $281.

$Baidu, Inc. (BIDU.US) $It closed down 4.4%.On Thursday, the company announced with Hainan Province that it will reach an in-depth cooperation in the field of block chain, jointly build Hainan Baidu, Inc. Block chain Laboratory, and initiate the establishment of Hainan Free Trade Zone (Hong Kong) Block chain pilot Zone Standards Committee. Also released for the first time "Baidu, Inc. Block chain White Paper 1.0" and Baidu, Inc. 's hyperchain system-XuperChain, and announced that the company has settled in Hainan.

$Qutoutiao (QTT.US) $It closed down 3.23% at $7.8.Citi gave Qutoutiao a "neutral" initial rating and set a target price of $8.40. Prior to this, Deutsche Bank also began to track Qutoutiao stock, and gave Qutoutiao stock "hold" initial rating. By contrast, Wall Street investment bank KeyBanc Capital Markets gave Qutoutiao an initial "overweight" rating on Oct. 9.

[star stocks]

Shares of the Economic Barometer were heavily sold off.Equipment leasing company$Joint Lease (URI.US) $It plummeted by 15.04%. Aerospace and Advanced Technology Industry Group$TXT.US (Teselon) $It plummeted 11.25%. Large manufacturers of construction and mining equipment$Caterpillar Inc (CAT.US) $It fell by 3.92%.

Technology stocks generally closed lower.$Apple Inc (AAPL.US) $Closed down 2.34%$Microsoft Corp (MSFT.US) $Closed down 2%$Amazon.Com Inc (AMZN.US) $Closed down 3.33%$Alphabet Inc-CL A (GOOGL.US) $It closed down 2.63%. Tesla, Inc. closed down 2.9% Facebook closed down 2.82%, Micron Technology Inc closed down 2.48%.

$Netflix Inc (NFLX.US) $It fell 4.93%, basically giving up all the increase brought about by the beautiful financial report.

$Studio City International Holdings (MSC.US) $Studio City, an entertainment resort owned by Melco, opened at $16.50 on Thursday and closed at $15.50, up 24 per cent from IPO's offering price of $12.50 per share and up as much as 47 per cent in intraday trading.

Performance of the top stocks by market capitalization on Thursday

Source: Futu Securities