In 2024, when there was a major reshuffle of trams, giant Tesla took the lead in the first quarter.

However, after the release of the worst earnings report, Tesla's stock price surged 13% after the market.

1

Tesla steps up, Musk educates Wall Street

Tesla's revenue for the first fiscal quarter was US$21.3 billion, lower than market expectations, the biggest drop since 2012. Tesla is being affected by continued price cuts. Net profit fell from US$2,513 billion in the same period last year to US$1.13 billion, a decrease of 55%.

A slight highlight is the gross profit margin. Tesla's gross margin fell to 17.4% in the first quarter, but this figure exceeded analysts' expectations of 16.5%. It seems that cost reduction and efficiency increases are having a positive impact on Tesla.

After the earnings report was released, Musk and Tesla executives attended the earnings conference call, and Tesla made a big move:

1. Accelerate the launch of more affordable models. There is no need to build a new plant or large-scale new production line, and the new models will be produced more efficiently on existing production lines. Musk expects the new models to be launched in early 2025 or the end of this year, which may increase Tesla's annual production capacity to more than 3 million units.

2. Tesla's driverless taxi Robotaxi product will be launched on August 8 this year. Musk called Robotaxi a “Cyber Cab” during the conference. Driverless driving has always been Tesla's main means of attracting investors. Musk said Tesla, the car manufacturer with the highest market capitalization in the world, will become worthless if it fails to achieve complete autonomous driving.

3. The much-anticipated humanoid robot Optimus is likely to go on sale as early as the end of 2025. Musk said Optimus will have limited production activities at Tesla's factory until the end of the year, and it is likely to go on sale before the end of next year. Musk believes that of all humanoid robot manufacturers, Tesla is the most likely to achieve mass production.

Furthermore, Musk educates Wall Street investors: We should think of it as an artificial intelligence or robotics company. If you think of Tesla as a car company, this is a wrong framework. If anyone doesn't believe Tesla will solve the automation problem, I don't think they should be investors in this company.

2

Huang Renxun: Humanoid robots will become mainstream, and the price is lower than expected

After experiencing a sharp drop of 10%, AI chip leader Nvidia's stock price rebounded 8% in the past two trading days.

Nicolai Tangen, head of the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund, said on Tuesday that there is clearly a large bubble in US technology stocks, but whether the bubble is too big depends on upcoming financial reports.

When asked when the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund would consider reducing positions with companies such as Nvidia, Tangen replied, “I don't have enough confidence or information to determine that Nvidia is overrated. Nvidia is a company with incredible technology and a real leader in the chip industry. This shows that despite market concerns about oversupply in the semiconductor industry, Nvidia can respond well to market challenges.”

On April 17, local time, Hwang In-hoon attended the CadenceLive 2024 conference to talk with Anirude Dievgen, CEO and President of Cadence.

Cadence is the world's largest provider of electronic design automation, semiconductor technology solutions and design services through the merger of SDASystems and eCAD in 1988.

The conversation between the two industry leaders covered a number of cutting-edge topics and was quite informative.

Hwang In-hoon's latest statement: AI will have a revolutionary impact in the three fields of data centers, robotics/autonomous driving, and life science; humanoid robots are expected to become popular devices in the near future, and the price is “friendly to the people”, comparable to cheap cars.

Hwang In-hoon pointed out that AI is a major expression of transformation in the computing field. Starting with computer graphics, it will have a revolutionary impact in the fields of three major fields (data centers, robotics/autonomous driving, life sciences).

For example, over the past 30 years, Nvidia's CUDA platform has accumulated various DSL (domain-specific languages) and specific libraries to assist drug discovery through AI accelerated computation. Wong In-hoon hopes that Nvidia can turn biology into an “engineering project” to speed up the process of scientific discovery.

During the conversation, Hwang In-hoon stressed that the market size of these three industries will all be huge; the market size of humanoid robots alone is large enough. He predicts that in the near future, humanoid robots will become a new category of devices that will attract everyone's attention. Hwang In-hoon believes that the manufacturing cost of humanoid robots may be much lower than people expected, and the selling price may not be higher than 10,000 to 20,000 US dollars.

In March of this year, at the Nvidia GTC conference, Nvidia launched an AI model called Project GROOT Foundation to create a humanoid robot with better performance. Additionally, Nvidia has released a Thor system chip specifically for robots.

Hwang In-hoon said, “The possibility of a ChatGPT moment in robotics is within easy reach, and we've spent a while building an end-to-end robotic system.”

3

Big purchases from a public offering, and Deng Xiaofeng reduced his holdings all the way

With the disclosure of the fund's report for the first quarter of 2024, the trend of public fund position adjustments came to light.

According to China Merchants Securities data, there are roughly three ideas for active partial equity fund position adjustments in the first quarter:

The first is to lay out a stable dividend section. Add sectors with high dividends, low fluctuation and abundant free cash flow, such as coal mining, electricity, major state-owned banks, railways and highways.

The second is to lay out the offshore chain sector. With the gradual recovery of overseas demand, the export chain is relatively prosperous, and some overseas sectors such as white goods, light industry, and construction machinery have been boosted to varying degrees.

The third is the layout of the resource products sector, which is mainly catalyzed by the strengthening of global commodity prices. Supply is expected to shrink, and prices for industrial metals such as copper and aluminum with low inventory levels have risen. The intrinsic value of the US dollar continues to depreciate due to overspending of US debt. Demand for gold purchases by central banks is strong. Combined with geographical conflicts, the safe-haven value of precious metals is highlighted, and prices of precious metals such as gold have risen sharply.

According to the data, by the end of the first quarter of 2024, Kweichow Moutai and Ningde Times were the first and second largest stocks. The top three A-share holdings increased by Ningde Times, Zijin Mining, and Midea Group, which increased their market holdings by 29.256 billion yuan, 21.522 billion yuan, and 14.637 billion yuan, respectively.

(The content of this article is a list of objective data and information and does not constitute any investment advice)

Among them, private equity boss Deng Xiaofeng “has a good heart” and Zijin Mining, a star stock in the resources sector, entered the top ten public fund holdings in the first quarter of 2024.

As early as 2019, products managed by Deng Xiaofeng first appeared in the top ten tradable stocks, and since then they have been heavily invested in this company.

Regarding the trend of industrial metals, Deng Xiaofeng once made a wonderful statement. In his review and outlook for 2022, he said, “Some upstream industrial metal varieties face a completely different supply and demand structural environment from the past, and their downward price elasticity will shrink and upward elasticity will increase. However, considering the uncertainty of economic growth in overseas developed countries in 2023, and that domestic economic growth is still in the early stages of recovery, short-term demand for these products is under pressure within 1-2 years. However, in the medium to long term, fluctuations caused by short-term uncertainty provide a better investment window.”

By the end of the third quarter of 2023, the two products managed by Deng Xiaofeng held 709 million shares in Zijin Mining. In the first quarter of 2024, the number of shares held by Deng Xiaofeng's two products was reduced to 611 million shares.

Private equity boss Deng Xiaofeng has continued to reduce his holdings in Zijin Mining since the first quarter of last year. From the third quarter of last year to the first quarter of this year, there are obvious signs that public funds have increased their positions. The number of fund products in the top ten holdings of Zijin Mining has increased dramatically from more than 500 to more than 1,000.