Source: Barron's Weekly Author: Ed Lin The second largest public retirement fund in the United States recently made significant adjustments to its stock investment portfolio listed in the United States. The California Teachers' Retirement Fund increased its investment in Chinese e-commerce company, pdd holdings (PDD.US), and bought more shares of Discover Financial Services (DFS.US) and Williams-Sonoma (WSM.US) in the first quarter, while reducing its holdings of American Airlines (AAL.US) stocks. The California Teachers' Retirement Fund disclosed this stock trading information in a report submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission. "Our public equity investment portfolio uses both passive and active strategies," the California Teachers' Retirement Fund said in a statement responding to a review request. "The portfolio's positions may change for various reasons, including fund managers' realignments of the active or index weights they require, or as a result of corporate mergers, stock splits, name changes or similar company actions." As of April 30, the fund managed assets of about $332.5 billion, making it the second largest public pension fund in the United States in terms of assets under management.
Author: Teresa Polletti

As Nvidia's market cap continues to soar, founder and CEO Huang Renxun has been consistently selling company shares in recent times. Huang Renxun has reduced his holdings for 42 trading days, a total of 5.04 million shares. Based on a conservative estimate of cashing out 12 million US dollars per day, Huang Renxun has cashed out more than 0.5 billion US dollars in 2 months. In addition, in the first half of 2024, company executives and directors sold stocks worth more than 0.7 billion US dollars, the highest amount in the company's history. $Apple (AAPL.US)$ At the product launch event on Monday (September 9th), investors did not get the price increase they were hoping for with the new iPhone 16. Apple CEO Cook's intention to increase sales without raising prices is very clear.

However, from the initial reaction of investors, they are not very satisfied with Apple's decision to release the iPhone 16 series at the same price as the iPhone 15 series. The starting price for the iPhone 16 Pro 128GB is $999, and the starting price for the iPhone 16 Pro Max 256GB is $1199, the same as last year's iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be available starting September 20th.

After the price announcement of the iPhone 16 series, Apple's stock price fell 1.9% at one point, but ultimately recovered and closed slightly up 0.04% at $220.91. Pre-market on Wednesday, Apple fell 1.29%.

In addition to the unchanged pricing, another reason for the decline in stock price is that some analysts are slightly disappointed with Apple's progressive approach to introducing artificial intelligence features.

When talking about the updates to Apple's digital assistant, Forrester Research analyst Thomas Husson commented, 'I don't think Siri is currently a new interface that can change the way we interact with the world around us. However, there are clear signs that Siri is finally transitioning to a 'digital agent' that uses device information and personal context to provide new multimodal experiences and take actions on behalf of the user.'

In the past two years, Apple's revenue has declined, so some analysts covering Apple stocks had hoped that the addition of 'Apple Intelligence' in the new iPhone series would bring a new revenue supercycle accompanied by a price increase. In order to further drive sales growth, Apple has also lowered the prices of the iPhone 14 series and iPhone 15 series.

CFRA Research analyst Angelo Zino wrote in a report to clients, 'We are disappointed with the lack of pricing changes and limited details about the artificial intelligence features.' Apple did not showcase many 'Apple Intelligence' features at the event, some of which were already shown at the June Global Developer Conference.

The lack of price increase for the iPhone 16 series may be related to several factors, such as signs of a slowdown in the US economy and the fact that 'Apple Intelligence' is still in its early stages. In terms of technology, Apple skipped the A17 Bionic chip and directly equipped the iPhone 16 series with the A18 Bionic chip (which is 30% faster than the previous generation chip), so Apple definitely weighed all factors before making the decision not to increase the price.

Apple can achieve revenue growth by offering lower pricing and generating higher sales, but the demand situation remains to be observed. Currently, the replacement cycle for iPhone users is longer than ever before, and 'Apple Intelligence' may not yet be enough to bring about a major cycle. Consumers will once again weigh whether the faster, lighter, and improved battery performance, as well as the improved camera, are sufficient reasons for them to upgrade to a new device.

However, analyst Amit Daryanani from Evercore ISI, who anticipated that Apple would not increase prices, believes that the next generation iPhone to be launched in 2025 will have a price increase.

In a report to clients, Daryanani wrote, 'We believe Apple is implementing its artificial intelligence strategy in a cautious manner, focusing on private and device-integrated features rather than seeking a killer app that attracts attention.'

Darienani is also bullish on the AI functionality supporting Chinese to be launched next year. He wrote in the report, "Overall, the features displayed by Apple will determine the demand for this generation of iPhones, and we still believe that Apple is at the beginning of a very strong two-year iPhone cycle."

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives is bullish on the performance of the iPhone 16 series, raising Apple's target price from $285 to $300 after the end of the conference.

Ives believes that the iPhone 16 series "will be the most successful iPhone product in Apple's history" because it may spark consumer interest in the AI trend.

Ives commented, "A new era of personalization and how consumers interact with the iPhone has begun, and we believe this will bring about a resurgence in iPhone growth."

Editor/rice