Source: Brokerage China Author: Qu Hongyan Recently, China Yangtze Power hit a historical high and once again showed the slow bull stock trend of "tripling in ten years". The slow bull market has left behind many passers-by and brought good returns to the steadfast investors. It is "rare for those who triple in one year to be like carp jumping over the dragon gate, while those who double in three years are few and far between." On the other end of the investment world, however, violent collapses are also deafening, with many financial products suspected of "Ponzi schemes" ceasing payments, leaving investors with no hope of recovering their investments. Both positive and negative cases illustrate the importance of forming a suitable mentality towards money in one's lifetime; otherwise, sooner or later, you will divorce yourself from your money. "I call this the money mind, a person's IQ can reach 120, 140, or even higher levels, and perhaps some people's minds are good at doing one thing, while others are good at doing another. They can do things that most ordinary people can't do. But I know some very smart people who make very foolish decisions because they lack the money mind." Buffett once said so. The so-called money mind refers to believing in common sense, believing in compound interest, being cautious and rational, thinking independently, prioritizing security over return, not dealing with people with questionable character, not easily guaranteeing for others, not believing in windfall profits, and not trying to cross legal norms for extra benefits. In today's world of ubiquitous information, everyone's wealth may become the "prey" of those with ulterior motives. Only with the money mind, can one form good behavior habits and shield oneself from separating from one's wealth. Do not entrust your wealth easily. Wealth is easy to lose but hard to accumulate, and trust is a vital reason leading to the rapid loss of wealth. "Do not allow anyone else to manage your business unless you can watch their every move closely and understand their behavior; or you have strong reasons to believe in their character and ability. For investors, this criterion determines when you can let someone else make investment decisions for you." Graham's criterion written eighty years ago is so clear. Almost all the investors who lost their wealth in the financial products have violated the above two criteria. They did not have the ability to closely supervise the whereabouts of their funds, nor did they have sufficient reasons to believe in the character of the product issuers. They easily invested their own wealth solely based on others' glib tongue and a piece of commitment paper. They did not act as gatekeepers of their own wealth and ended up with nothing left even if the government punished the wrongdoers. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." This is a phrase Munger often says. Destiny must be in one's own hands, and investors with a suitable money mind will try their best to find suspicious points in their investments to protect the safety of their principal. For example, whether the manager is trustworthy, whether the underlying assets are profitable, whether oneself can timely monitor the risks in the investment process, and whether the sales staff is obtaining large commissions. As long as any unreliable signs are found, these investors firmly will not invest their money. Do not desire to get rich quick. As in the capital market and anywhere else, making money is not easy, and desiring to get rich quick will lead to quick loss of wealth. In the capital market, the desire to get rich quickly often leads to investors over-allocating specific stocks, industries, or assets at the worst time. For example, buying high-risk stocks that can gain huge returns once an adventure succeeds, but the chance of success is very small, also known as "whispering stocks" by legendary fund manager Peter Lynch. "They often tell investors a story with explosive effects. These 'whispering stocks' have a hypnotic effect on people, and it is easy for you to believe that the story the company tells has an emotional appeal that can easily confuse you." This is like hearing a very tempting "sizzling" sound, making you salivate, but you did not notice that there is no steak on the grill. In the eyes of investors who lack the money mind, stable yield provided by blue chips such as China Yangtze Power cannot meet their demands. However, historical experience clearly shows that buying stocks lacking in safety solely based on imagined high yields is unwise. The long-term average investment return of general stocks is 9%-10%, which is also the average investment return of stock indexes in history, a benchmark to measure one's investment performance and the benchmark to measure fund investment performance.
Author: Chen Ming.

According to foreign media reports, the German government plans to provide approximately 2 billion euros in new subsidies to the semiconductor industry. The new funding will be provided to chip companies, involving 10 to 15 projects, including the production of unprocessed wafers and microchip assembly. Earlier, the South Korean government announced an emergency injection of over 14 trillion won (approximately 10 billion USD) in policy financing to cope with the uncertainties from the new U.S. government and the increasingly fierce competition in the chip industry.

Recently, there were reports that to challenge Nvidia's monopoly position in the artificial intelligence (AI) chip field, the tech giant Amazon is accelerating the development of a new AI chip, Trainium2. Compared to the previous generation, it offers four times better performance, three times more memory capacity, and significant advantages in energy efficiency and cost.

Germany's 'huge investment' subsidizes the semiconductor industry.

According to Bloomberg News, the German government is preparing to make new investments of several billion euros in the country's semiconductor industry.

On Thursday local time, Annika Einhorn, a spokeswoman for the German Ministry of Economic Affairs, stated in a declaration that the new funds will be provided to chip companies to develop 'far beyond the current technological level of modern production capacity.' Einhorn did not publicly disclose the specific subsidy amount, but two officials who attended official events related to the funding plan this week indicated that the total subsidy amount is expected to be around 2 billion euros, with the final figure subject to change.

Earlier this month, the German Ministry of Economy issued a call for chip companies to apply for new subsidies. The new German government, to be elected in February next year, may set its own budget, leaving uncertainty for chip companies applying for subsidies.

Governments around the world have been investing public funds in the chip industry to achieve local production of chip components, which control everything from cutting-edge artificial intelligence to everyday devices. The European Semiconductor Act passed in 2023 aims to strengthen the EU's semiconductor ecosystem, doubling its market share by 2030 to reach 20% of global capacity.

Recently, the German chip industry has faced two major setbacks. Intel has postponed its plan to build a 30 billion euro chip factory in Magdeburg, which was expected to be the largest project supported by the EU Chip Act, receiving a 10 billion euro subsidy. However, the troubled U.S. company Intel postponed its plans in September. In addition, Wolfspeed Inc. and ZF Friedrichshafen AG also canceled their plans to establish a chip joint venture in western Germany.

According to the European Semiconductor Act, the first round of chip subsidies in Germany was awarded to Intel, as well as a joint venture between Infineon and Taiwan Semiconductor in Dresden.

The German Ministry of Economy hopes to fund 10 to 15 projects with the newly proposed funds, involving various areas including the production of unprocessed wafers and microchip assembly. Einhorn stated, "Funded projects should help Germany and Europe establish a strong and sustainable microelectronics ecosystem."

South Korea is also strongly supporting the chip industry. The South Korean government has urgently injected over 14 trillion won (about 10 billion U.S. dollars) of policy financing to save the domestic semiconductor industry facing crisis, in response to uncertainties from the new U.S. government and intensifying competition in the chip industry. This comes after South Korea announced the 26 trillion won scale "Semiconductor Eco-Community Support Program" in June this year, introducing new measures again 5 months later.

On the 27th, the South Korean Ministry of Economy and Finance stated that to continue implementing stimulus policies, next year it will provide financial support including loans from state-owned banks, with an amount reaching 14.3 trillion won. Additionally, in a statement, the South Korean government plans to bear a "large part" of the required 1.8 trillion won for the installation of cables in the underground of the Longin and Pyeongchipsong Industry Clusters in southern Seoul to support enterprises in the new chip industrial park. South Korea is constructing the world's largest high-tech chip manufacturing cluster, aiming to attract related enterprises. The South Korean government also plans to increase the tax exemption rate for semiconductor-related companies by 10 percentage points until 2030, and build a national "Artificial Intelligence Computing Center" with a scale of 4 trillion won.

The South Korean government also plans to increase the tax credit rate for semiconductor-related companies by 10 percentage points by 2030, and build a national "Artificial Intelligence Computing Center" with a scale of 4 trillion won.

Amazon is 'challenging' Nvidia.

Recently, there have been reports that Amazon is intensively developing a new AI chip Trainium2 at its engineering lab in Austin, Texas. Compared to the previous generation product, its performance has quadrupled, memory capacity has tripled, and it has significant advantages in energy efficiency and cost. Amazon hopes to reduce the procurement cost of AI chips and improve overall efficiency in data processing through these optimizations.

According to reports, this chip is Amazon's third-generation product in the field of AI hardware, aiming to provide a more efficient and cost-competitive solution for machine learning model training. The product is scheduled to complete testing and delivery by the end of this year.

Amazon's chip business is led by James Hamilton, who was one of the pioneers in cloud computing. Hamilton's team proposed the idea of ​​independently developing chips as early as 2013. Amazon's first AI chip, Inferentia, was launched in 2019, focusing on inference tasks, while the Trainium series is mainly targeted at the needs of training machine learning models. Currently, Amazon's Trainium2 chip has started deployment in data centers and is expected to be fully promoted in multiple core data centers including Ohio, forming a cluster of up to 100,000 chips.

Amazon's self-developed chip development plan is aimed at challenging Nvidia's current monopoly position in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) chips. However, due to Nvidia's continuous leading position in technology updates and market share, market analysts believe that its competitive advantage is difficult to shake in the short term.

It is worth noting that Amazon has recently made massive investments in the AI field. Amazon announced on the 22nd an additional investment of $4 billion in the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, bringing Amazon's total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion. Anthropic is considered a strong competitor of OpenAI, and media analysis suggests that Amazon's move indicates that the competition among tech giants in artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly intense.

Anthropic was founded in 2021, headquartered in San Francisco, USA, and was founded by former senior executives of OpenAI in 2021, focusing on creating explainable, secure, and controllable artificial intelligence systems. The company's flagship artificial intelligence large model Claude operates based on 'Constitutional AI,' which is a type of artificial intelligence model that uses predefined principles to guide its outputs, avoiding some erroneous or discriminatory output reactions.

Amazon's connection with Anthropic is quite close. On the one hand, Amazon is a significant investor in Anthropic, having previously invested in Anthropic twice, participating in two rounds of financing in September 2023 for $1.25 billion and in March of this year for $2.75 billion. On the other hand, Amazon is an important supplier to Anthropic. Anthropic purchases a large number of cloud computing and chip products from Amazon, but Amazon does not prevent Anthropic from cooperating with other suppliers such as Google and Nvidia.

Editor/rice