Source: Zhitong Finance "Since 1950, the S&P 500 index has risen more than 10% 21 times as of the end of May. In about 90% of these cases, the S&P 500 index rose for the rest of the year. There were only two instances of declines for the rest of the year, in 1987 (-13%) and 1986 (-0.1%)." With the rebound of the stock market, the old adage "Sell in May and Go Away" seems to have been a bad advice once again. Last month, the S&P 500 index rose 4.8%, the best May performance since 2009. The NASDAQ 100 index rose nearly 6.2%, and the NASDAQ Composite Index rose 6.9%. Goldman Sachs FICC & Equities Trading Division said: "History doesn't really support this saying. Don't sell, leave the market (go on vacation), and enjoy the good times." The rising trend is still to be continued? If history is any guide, it may indicate that the rise of the stock market is not over yet. Looking ahead to the rest of 2024, Scott Rubner, Managing Director of the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Division and tactical expert, pointed out the following historical background for investors. Rubner stated that the S&P 500 index has risen 10.7% year-to-date, and since 1950, the S&P 500 index has risen more than 10% 21 times as of the end of May. In about 90% of these cases, the S&P 500 index rose for the rest of the year. There were only two instances of declines for the rest of the year, in 1987 (-13%) and 1986 (-0.1%). "Since 1950, the median return of the last 7 months of each year (June 1 to December 31) is 5.4%. In the aforementioned 21 cases, the average performance of the last 7 months increased to 8.1%." Rubner added. Rubner also pointed out that the NASDAQ index has risen for 16 consecutive Julys, with an average return of about 4.64%.
Author: Rousseau

According to media reports citing informed sources, this week, the social media company Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ plans to disclose that it has signed agreements with well-known Hollywood stars like Judy Dench, Kristen Bell, and John Cena to provide voice-overs for their Meta AI chatbots, and may unveil the Meta's first AR glasses. With Meta's stock price hitting a record high, the upcoming Meta Connect 2024 conference may greatly boost the bullish trend on the stock, where Meta is expected to announce the latest developments in the field of artificial intelligence and Meta's VR/AR headset progress.

Informed sources revealed that a brand new artificial intelligence audio feature from Meta is expected to be announced at the Meta Connect 2024 conference on Wednesday Eastern Time, providing users of Meta's social platforms with the option to choose the voice of their Meta AI chatbot from five well-known actors, including Hollywood stars Ocafina and Gigan-Michael Kai. Informed sources added that there are other unbranded generic voices available for Meta users to choose from.

Media citing informed sources reported that this week, Meta's many applications, including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, will introduce the Meta AI voice-over feature with the voices of the mentioned celebrities in the US and other English-speaking markets.

Bloomberg previously reported that Meta is negotiating with Hollywood and social celebrities to embed their voices into Meta's artificial intelligence projects.

Since 2022, when Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched the groundbreaking AI chatbot - ChatGPT, generative artificial intelligence services have continued to be a hot topic of discussion. Globally, not only many technology companies but also companies from various industries are striving to launch AI chatbots driven by large language models (LLM) based on their own strengths and databases, offering services including rapid and efficient generation of content, images, videos, and voice.

Meta's exclusive AI chatbot, Meta AI, has been in fierce competition since its introduction to its social platforms with Gemini developed by Google under Alphabet and ChatGPT developed by OpenAI.

As early as May this year, OpenAI demonstrated a similar customized audio feature for its AI chatbot ChatGPT. However, after users pointed out that it sounded like Hollywood actress Scarlett Johansson, OpenAI paused the use of the AI voice dubbed 'Sky' in the audible version of ChatGPT.

In a statement released by OpenAI at the time, they stated: "We believe that artificial intelligence voices should not deliberately mimic the unique voices of celebrities. In our opinion, Sky's voice is not an imitation of Scarlett Johansson, but belongs to a different professional actress using her own natural speaking voice."

Hollywood superstar and actress of Black Widow in The Avengers, Scarlett Johansson played a fictional AI chat assistant in the globally popular movie "Her," narrating a romantic story of a man falling in love with a virtual AI voiced by Johansson. This is exactly the vision of Meta AI - hoping to soon launch a specialized "all-powerful AI companion" that has undergone extensive iterations similar to the AI in the movie "Her" who understands users' preferences and habits superbly.

Meta VR/AR welcomes new developments.

Furthermore, media reports citing insiders reveal that the company is expected to introduce updated versions of its virtual and augmented reality headsets (VR/AR headsets) at the upcoming Meta Connect 2024 event, particularly the first AR glasses from Meta, and discuss their plans for other hardware devices, such as Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses.

Earlier this month, Ray-Ban smart glasses manufacturer EssilorLuxottica expanded its deep cooperation with Meta, aiming to collaborate on the development of multiple generations of smart glasses products in the next ten years. Last year, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses became the first consumer electronics product with an audio version of Meta AI chatbot in it.

According to The Verge, the most anticipated product at the Meta Connect event may be the Quest 3S portable VR headset device priced at $299.99. The Verge also mentioned that Meta may focus on introducing its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. The highlights and pricing of this potential new product from Meta may put the stocks of Apple and Snap on high alert due to competitive products.

Analyst Justin Post from Bank of America predicts that Meta will showcase a prototype of its new AR headset, focusing more on mixed reality and augmented reality during the demonstration, rather than the past emphasis on virtual reality.

Meta is expected to reveal the latest research progress of Llama, dubbed as the "Linux of the large model field".

Bank of America analyst Post also mentioned that the Meta Connect conference may shift its focus to augmented reality (AR) and showcase the iterative progress of its Llama artificial intelligence large model.

Post suggested that Meta may introduce new artificial intelligence features for its Messenger and WhatsApp platforms, update the open-source large language model Llama, and also believes that the Meta AI new feature demo will have the opportunity to demonstrate the integration and enhancement of artificial intelligence features on Facebook and Instagram, as well as how Meta AI enhances user engagement.

In July, Meta launched its Llama 3.1 series of open-source artificial intelligence large models. Analysts from JPMorgan believe that this release of the open-source AI large model may lead Meta AI to become the "largest AI assistant in terms of user scale by the end of the year".

In July, Meta released a total of three Llama 3.1 open-source AI large language models, with Llama 3.1 405B containing 405 billion parameters, making it Meta's largest model to date. Meta CEO Zuckerberg referred to Llama 3.1 as a "starting point of art", with performance indicators comparable to the most powerful models published by OpenAI and Google. Additionally, Meta partners with Nvidia, as well as cloud giants Amazon AWS and Microsoft, to provide customized services for the Llama 3.1 model to global enterprises.

Meta claims that Llama 3.1 405B can match the performance indicators of OpenAI's proprietary large model GPT-4o and Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet in various aspects. For example, Llama 3.1 405B excels in text-to-code generation tasks and chart generation compared to GPT-4o, achieving a "mixed bag of results" in an overall performance comparison with GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

Can meta platforms, whose stock price has repeatedly hit new highs, continue to soar?

In the opinion of many Wall Street analysts, Meta, which has more than 3 billion users worldwide, may launch Meta AI chatbots that may become the most popular AI chatbots in the world, and is expected to be more popular than ChatGPT. This is also the core logic of analysts' optimism about Meta's stock price, that advertising placement and user application software are undoubtedly the fields that Meta is most proficient in, so Meta with a massive user group of up to 3 billion is currently in the best position for AI monetization.

Analyst Barton Crockett from the well-known Wall Street investment institution Rosenblatt stated that Meta Connect 2024 may lead the recent global artificial intelligence news cycle, potentially acting as a catalyst for both Meta itself and hot technology stocks related to AI.

The analyst believes that Meta may introduce cheaper virtual reality headsets, showcase brand new Meta augmented reality glasses, and highlight progress made in integrating artificial intelligence into existing software products. The Rosenblatt analyst team rates Meta as a 'buy', with a target price of up to $643 within 12 months. In comparison, Meta's stock price closed at $564.41 on Monday, reaching a historical high of $573.98 during the trading day, showing a continuous upward trend in Meta's stock price throughout the year.

Editor/Jeffy