In the first half of 2024, the world situation has been turbulent and hot events have emerged one after another. Investors have also witnessed one historical event after another. Among major asset classes, the US stocks supported by "AI concept" and "Seven Tech Giants" have been strong since last year, repeatedly hitting new highs. Meanwhile, market hotspots have been rotating continuously, from Japanese stocks, gold, copper to silver, and then to Hong Kong stocks. Investors' preference has been constantly changing.

What global asset categories have been leading the way over the past turbulent six months? And what market targets have underperformed? Let us take a quick look first.

U.S. Stock Market

The Nasdaq Composite Index, dominated by technology companies, has remained strong in the first half of 2024, with a year-to-date increase of nearly 18%. Major US giants such as Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have repeatedly hit new highs, with various AI industry chain companies in full bloom, driving the overall rise of the US stock market.

Regarding future trends, the bulls believe that the United States' current financial environment is relatively loose, and the expansion of corporate profit margins, coupled with the continuation of the AI boom, is expected to continue to support the US stock market. The bears mainly emphasize the high interest rates from the perspective of interest rates and believe that the sustained high-interest rate environment may trigger an economic hard landing. They also believe that the market has overlooked many risks, such as domestic political risks in the United States, geopolitical risks, and excessive concentration of the market on a few stocks such as Nvidia.

Hong Kong Stock Market

Overall, the Hong Kong stock market has shown a trend of fluctuation and upward movement in the first half of the year, with a quick rally in May, followed by a correction. Year-to-date, the Hang Seng Index has risen by 5.76% accumulatively, while the Hang Seng Tech Index has fallen by 1.67% accumulatively.

The reasons for the previous high include central bank bond purchases, further relaxation of local real estate policies, and the description of finance, currency, and real estate at the Politburo meeting in April exceeded market expectations. The reasons for the subsequent correction, in addition to profit-taking after the oversold, are also related to the still-weak fundamentals of the mainland and the continuing private credit contraction. As the market enters the overbought zone, investors' divergences have increased and profit-taking is not surprising. The Hang Seng Index can get some support around 18,000 points.

Japanese Stock Market

With 'Stock God' Buffett's continuous bullishness on Japanese stocks, the 'Japan Premium' fever has swept the world. Under the frenzy of foreign capital inflows, the silent Japanese stock market for more than 30 years has finally emerged in the spotlight. The Nikkei 225 index successfully broke through the 40,000 mark in the first half of the year, attracting global attention. Although there has been a subsequent decline, it still has recorded a year-to-date increase of 15.34%. However, as the Bank of Japan steps out of the era of negative interest rates, the move to stop buying Japanese stock ETFs may cause volatility in Japanese stocks in the short term.

Overall, the performance of the Japanese stock market at later time points this year depends mainly on whether Japan can truly emerge from deflation and take a more solid step towards achieving its inflation target of 2%. This requires not only officials constantly adjusting relevant policies and regulations, but also citizens releasing their accumulated savings for daily consumption and investment.

Commodity Market

Under the shadows of geopolitical uncertainties, high inflation, and large-scale debt issuances, the spotlight of the hedging asset gold has shone even brighter. The COMEX gold futures have performed well in the first half of the year, and have been in a high-level operation state overall. The accumulative increase since the beginning of the year is 12.69%. Due to the correlation between the two precious metals, silver has also begun to catch up with the rising trend of gold. Currently, the accumulative increase of COMEX silver futures has exceeded that of gold, and has risen by 22.81% since the beginning of the year. In addition, due to the surge in demand for renewable energy brought by the AI boom, copper, the key metal for manufacturing electrical equipment, has ushered in a bull market. Coupled with the declining production of Chile, the world's largest copper supply country, the price of copper has continued to skyrocket, with an accumulative increase of 13.85% since the beginning of the year.

The mid-year inventory and sharing activity is coming in full force. In the first half of 2024, the stock market is booming. What stock market opportunities have you taken advantage of?

Welcome to share your investment experience and outcomes with mooers, let's review the investment report card of the first half of the year. Plus, there are limited edition futubull (福牛 figure, soldier futubull, knight futubull) and plenty of points waiting for you to claim.Come and join us now~

Editor/Jeffrey