Source: Sina US Stocks On the evening of the 20th Beijing time, the US stocks opened mixed on Thursday, and then the three major indexes rose slightly. Nvidia hit another new high and consolidated its position as the largest market cap company in the US stock market. Initial jobless claims in the United States last week were higher than expected, and real estate and manufacturing indexes were below expectations. Until the manuscript was submitted, the S&P 500 index rose 0.29% to break through 5500 points, the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.37%, and the Dow Jones Index rose 0.13%. The US stock market was closed on Wednesday due to the June holiday (Juneteenth). On Tuesday, the S&P 500 index and the Nasdaq both set new historical highs. The US stock market is expected to record gains this week. The S&P 500 index set its 31st new high this year on Tuesday. Due to the continued AI craze and the resilience of economic growth, it is expected to continue to support corporate profits, especially in the technology sector. Nvidia's stock price hit another new high. The AI darling and chip maker surpassed Microsoft last Tuesday and became the world's most valuable company. Against the background of the continued AI craze boosting the stock market, Nvidia's stock price has risen 174% from 2024 to date. As Nvidia consolidates its position as a thriving market leader in the AI theme market, its market value has surpassed that of Apple in early June. "Nvidia is still the most important stock in the world," said Chris Weston, head of Pepperstone research, in a report. However, Weston warned that the overall performance of the index market was poor, and the market participation was mediocre, suggesting that the rise was built on an unstable foundation. "The fact remains that the market is still very bullish on AI-related stocks and large tech stocks, and given the lack of clear immediate risks, the path of least resistance is for stock indices to rise." While consumer spending has shown signs of slowing and hints at potential economic weakness, investors continue to flock to the AI giant. The rise of Nvidia has also boosted its peers. Chip maker Broadcom has surged more than 60% from 2024 to date. Scott Chronert, Citigroup's US stock strategy director, wrote in a report on Tuesday: "We still believe that Wall Street (the S&P 500) is diverging from the corporate sector (the foundation of the US economy), is this strange? There is no doubt that generative AI is currently infiltrating the US stock market environment as a sustained driver of growth." Nevertheless, some commentators have noted that while this doldrums has not yet fully affected the US stock market, which repeatedly sets new highs, the rise lacks breadth beyond the largest tech companies, and this situation may continue to deteriorate. Thomas Fitzpatrick, managing director of R.J. O'Brien and Associates, said, "There's a feeling of AI theme that's very similar to the 2000-2001 US stock style, but as we know, markets stay irrational longer than you stay solvent. But for now, it's hard to stop the speeding train." Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, said that due to three major unfavorable factors that will suppress stock prices, the US stock market will see a correction. This Wall Street veteran pointed out that so far this year, the stock market has performed strongly, with the S&P 500 index up 15% from 2024. However, he predicted that the benchmark index would fall 5% due to unfavorable interest rates, inflation, and stock valuations. The inflation rate is declining but still above the Federal Reserve's target of 2%, leading Fed officials to expect only one interest rate cut by year-end. As for Thursday's economic data, the initial claims for unemployment benefits in the United States were almost unchanged last week, and the data for the previous week rose sharply. These data tend to fluctuate before and after holidays and school vacations. Data released by the US Department of Labor on Thursday showed that as of June 15, the number of initial claims for unemployment benefits decreased by 5,000 to 238,000. The number of continued claims for unemployment benefits as of June 8 rose to 1.82 million. In the past year, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits has remained low as the labor market has shown resilience in the face of high prices and high interest rates. The four-week moving average of initial jobless claims rose to 232,750, the highest level since September last year.

On Friday, the US stock market had the highest trading volume. The stock fell by 0.09%, with a turnover of USD 49.5 billion. The stock has risen more than 10% this week. According to media reports, the US federal regulatory agency has reached an agreement to allow antitrust investigations into Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia's dominant position in the AI industry.$Tesla (TSLA.US)$Up 2.08%, rising for the eighth consecutive trading day, the stock price hit a new high in half a year, with a turnover of 38.342 billion US dollars. This week, the stock has accumulated more than 27% increase, basically offsetting the decline this year.

On Tuesday (July 2), the company reported that it delivered a total of 0.444 million new cars in the second quarter, a year-on-year decrease of 4.8%, and a total output of about 0.411 million in the second quarter. This is better than the market expectation of 0.4393 million vehicles.

Better than expected delivery also helped Tesla maintain its top position in the global electric vehicle sales rankings, surpassing its competitor BYD.

On Wednesday (July 3), Tesla's official Weibo announced that the second-generation humanoid robot Optimus will make its debut at the 2024 World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai from July 4th to 7th, and "witness the new evolution of humanoid robots". Compared with the prototype shown earlier, the second-generation of Optimus robot has made significant progress in weight, flexibility and other areas. Some analysts believe that at the current rate of iteration, Optimus robots may soon replace human beings in many fields.

The second.$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$Down 1.91%, with a turnover of 27.207 billion US dollars.

New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu believes that Nvidia's amazing rise since the beginning of last year has finally come to an end. He downgraded Nvidia's rating from buy to neutral. The analyst believes that after rising 240% and 157% last year and this year, respectively, Nvidia's stock price has "fully reflected" its valuation.

The third.$Apple (AAPL.US)$Up 2.16%, with a turnover of 13.591 billion US dollars. According to industry media reports, Apple M5 series chips will be manufactured by TSMC and use TSMC's most advanced SoIC-X packaging technology for AI servers. Apple is expected to mass produce M5 chips in the second half of next year, when TSMC will significantly enhance its SoIC capacity. Currently, Apple is using the M2 Ultra chip in its AI server cluster, and the expected usage this year may be around 0.2 million. $Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM.US)$According to market rumors, Apple M5 series chips will be manufactured by TSMC and use TSMC's most advanced SoIC-X packaging technology for AI servers. Apple is expected to mass produce M5 chips in the second half of next year, when TSMC will significantly enhance its SoIC capacity. Currently, Apple is using the M2 Ultra chip in its AI server cluster, and the expected usage this year may be around 0.2 million.

Ranked fourth.$Meta Platforms (META.US)$Up 5.87%, with a turnover of 11.351 billion US dollars. The company recently released its latest AI model, Meta 3D Gen (3DGen). According to Meta, 3DGen can quickly generate 3D content with high-resolution textures and material maps based on text prompts in less than a minute. In addition, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, disclosed on the social platform Threads that the monthly active user number of Threads has exceeded 0.175 billion.

In addition, Meta Platforms recently announced that it will release a V67 system update for Quest 3, Quest 2, and Quest Pro users, which will start to be pushed on July 8th.

The sixth.$Amazon (AMZN.US)$Up 1.22%, with a turnover of 7.966 billion US dollars. According to SEC filings, from July 2nd to 3rd, Amazon CEO Bezos sold a total of 1.664886 million shares of Amazon stock, with a total cashout of 0.3331 billion US dollars.

The eighth.$Microsoft (MSFT.US)$Up 1.47%, with a turnover of 7.46 billion US dollars. Fu Group analyst Michael Turrin maintained Microsoft's buy rating with a target price of $500.

11th place$Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$Up 2.57%, with a turnover of 3.98 billion US dollars. Due to the increased energy consumption of artificial intelligence, Google's carbon emissions reached 14.3 million tons in 2023, an increase of nearly 50% from five years ago. This is far from the "net zero emissions" target it previously set to deal with climate change.

According to the FT report on Wednesday, Google pointed out in its annual environmental report on Tuesday that its greenhouse gas emissions reached 14.3 million tons of carbon equivalent in 2023, an increase of 48% compared with the benchmark of 2019 and 13% compared with 2022. Growth of its energy-related emissions (mainly from data center power consumption) increased by 37% year-on-year and accounted for one-fourth of its total greenhouse gas emissions. These data indicate that Google is going in the opposite direction of its "net zero emissions" goal set three years ago.

Ranked 14th.$Arm Holdings (ARM.US)$Up 7.7%, with a turnover of 2.536 billion US dollars. On Friday, the US semiconductor sector generally rose.

Ranked 19th.$Taiwan Semiconductor (TSM.US)$Up 0.82%, with a turnover of 2.091 billion US dollars. According to market rumors, Apple M5 series chips will be manufactured by TSMC and use TSMC's most advanced SoIC-X packaging technology for AI servers. Apple is expected to mass-produce M5 chips in the second half of next year, when TSMC will significantly enhance its SoIC capacity.

As part of TSMC's advanced packaging technology combination 3D Fabric, TSMC's SoIC is the industry's first high-density 3D chiplet stack technology, and SoIC is the most advanced packaging technology for "3D packaging".

In addition, it is rumored in the market that TSMC's most advanced 3-nanometer technology may raise prices by around 5% in 2025, while 5-nanometer may also raise quotations in response to the increase in production costs. Analysts pointed out that the news that "TSMC's 3-nanometer advanced process will raise prices at least three times in the past month" shows the importance of TSMC's 3-nanometer advanced process to all walks of life.

Morgan Stanley's report states that under the trend of artificial intelligence development, Taiwan Semiconductor's demand visibility is better than historical average. With Taiwan Semiconductor creating value for its customers, the bank believes the company will be able to raise pricing, and the bank expects Taiwan Semiconductor's earnings per share forecast for 2024 to 2026 to be raised by 5%, 2%, and 1%, respectively. It is expected that the value-based re-pricing of Taiwan Semiconductor will improve the gross margin.

Editor/Lambor