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 Thursday, Nvidia, the first-ranked stock in trading volume, rose 6.13% with a turnover of 40.25 billion US dollars. According to the latest report released by Jibang Consulting, Nvidia is currently the largest buyer in the HBM market. After new products such as Blackwell Ultra and B200A are expected to be launched in 2025, its procurement share in the HBM market will exceed 70%. It is expected that Blackwell Ultra, which Nvidia plans to launch in 2025, will use eight HBM3e12hi chips. GB200 could also be upgraded, and with B200A planned, it is estimated that the proportion of 12hi products in HBM3e will increase to 40% by 2025, with a chance to rise.

Tesla, the second-ranked stock, rose 3.69% with a turnover of 12.82 billion US dollars. According to data from the China Passenger Car Association, the overall trend of new energy passenger car companies was strong in July. A total of 17 auto manufacturers achieved monthly wholesale sales of more than 10,000 new energy vehicles (an increase of 2 compared to the same period last year and a decrease of 2 compared to the previous month), accounting for 89.6% of all new energy passenger vehicles (90.6% last month and 87.6% in the same period last year). BYD sold 340,799 vehicles, and Tesla China sold 74,117 vehicles.

Apple, ranked third, rose 1.66% with a turnover of 10.025 billion US dollars. According to Canalys, Apple's market share in China has dropped from 16% in the same period last year to 14%, which means that the company has dropped out of the top five smartphone suppliers in China.

In addition, the iPhone series has a stable market share in South Korea second only to Samsung, but Apple usually releases new models in South Korea several weeks after the first batch is released, which makes South Korean Apple users very dissatisfied. According to multiple media reports, Apple is considering launching the iPhone 16 series in South Korea ahead of schedule due to lower demand in the Chinese market. If the news is true, this will be the first time South Korea has become one of the new iPhone's first release sites since the launch of the iPhone 3GS in 2009.

Meta Platforms, ranked fourth, rose 4.24% with a turnover of 8.139 billion US dollars. Meta Platforms announced that it will immediately close its VR game studio Ready at Dawn as part of its cost-cutting plan. The studio has developed the well-received "Echo" series of VR games.

With the maturity of VR technology, Ready at Dawn turned to VR game development in 2018 and launched the popular "Echo Arena" and "Lone Echo". In 2023, Meta Oculus acquired the studio. In the same year, due to a decrease in the number of players, Meta closed the free game "Echo VR".

Microsoft, ranked fifth, rose 1.07% with a turnover of 8.133 billion US dollars. Microsoft responded to Delta Air's allegations about the "Microsoft blue screen" incident in the US. Mark Cheffo, the lawyer representing Microsoft, said in a letter to Delta Air: "Microsoft sympathizes with the impact of the CrowdStrike incident on Delta Air and its customers. But your letter and Delta's public comments are incomplete, incorrect, misleading, and damaging to Microsoft and its reputation."

Furthermore, Delta Air did not modernize its technology before the widespread IT failure last month, which led to the cancellation of thousands of flights, according to the letter.

This letter is also seen by foreign media as Microsoft's "counterattack" against Delta Air's previous accusations.

Earlier, Delta Air CEO Ed Bastian told the media that Microsoft's products were fragile, and more than 0.04 million of the company's servers were affected by CrowdStrike's erroneous update. He hoped to get compensation from CrowdStrike and Microsoft to offset the approximately 0.5 billion US dollars in losses caused by the failure.

Eli Lilly and Co, ranked sixth, rose 9.48% with a turnover of 7.945 billion US dollars. The company's second-quarter revenue exceeded Wall Street's expectations thanks to surging sales of its weight loss drugs.

David Ricks, CEO of Eli Lilly and Co, said in a statement, "As we advance our manufacturing expansion, sales of drugs such as Mounjaro, Zepbound and Verzenio lead our strong financial performance in the second quarter."

In the three months of the second quarter, Eli Lilly and Co's global revenue was 11.3 billion US dollars, exceeding Wall Street's expected 9.92 billion US dollars. Adjusted earnings per share were $3.92, exceeding Wall Street's expected $2.60 per share.

The pharmaceutical giant said it has raised its full-year revenue outlook by $3 billion, predicting it will be between $45.4 billion and $46.6 billion, due to the strong performance of Mounjaro and Zepbound.

Amazon, ranked seventh, rose 1.86% with a turnover of 7.367 billion US dollars. Amazon's $4 billion investment in AI company Anthropic is facing investigation by UK regulators. According to the latest news on Thursday, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched a merger investigation after collecting opinions in April and May this year on whether the partnership may reduce market competition.

CMA stated in a launch notice that it has sufficient information to start an inquiry to decide whether to enter the "Phase 2 investigation". According to the notice, the UK regulatory agency will announce this decision before October 4.

The ninth-placed Super Micro Computer rose 3.5%, with a turnover of $5.955 billion. In the latest earnings conference call, Super Micro Computer CEO Charles Liang revealed that he was cautious about the sales growth of Nvidia's Blackwell GPU and expected no significant growth before the March 2025 quarter. Although Super Micro Computer may see preliminary sales of the Blackwell GPU in the December quarter, Liang believes that the true sales peak will come in the March 2025 quarter.

The tenth-placed Google Class A shares rose 1.94%, with a turnover of $4.149 billion. According to reports, Google is closely working with smartphone brands such as Xiaomi and Oppo, trying to bring Google Gemini to more domestic models in China. In terms of specific functions, it may include AI transcription, image generation, and so on.

At Wednesday's Google I/O Connect China, several Chinese smartphone manufacturers took the stage to discuss Google Gemini and its position in proprietary hardware. In addition, Oppo and Xiaomi both showed their partnership with Google on foreign social media platforms such as X.

Lei Jun said that the upcoming Xiaomi flagship will continue to cooperate with Google, fully utilizing the Google Gemini model and Google Cloud.

The thirteenth-placed Palantir rose 11.25%, with a turnover of $2.748 billion. Palantir has partnered with Microsoft to deploy products including Gotham software on Microsoft's Azure Government and Azure Government Secret cloud platforms, which are targeted at federal agencies such as the US government and the Department of Defense.

The sixteenth-placed McKesson fell 11.34%, with a turnover of $2.243 billion. According to the Sina Finance ESG Rating Center, on August 3, 2024, McKesson's (MCK.US) Refinitiv ESG rating was upgraded from B to B+.

Intel, ranked 20th, closed 7.9% higher, with a turnover of $1.926 billion. On August 8th, Intel unveiled its first-generation in-car Intel Elkhart Lake independent graphics card in Shenzhen. Jack Weast, Vice President of Intel and General Manager of the Automotive Business Unit, introduced at the event that the computing power of the graphics card platform reached 229 TOPS, and the floating point operation capability (FLOPS) per second was about 4 times higher than that of integrated graphics card computing power; it supports 8 independent displays and simultaneously supports 4K.

Editor/Lambor