Global Market and News Summary

Market Overview

Last Friday, the Strait of Hormuz reopened, and market expectations for a long-term ceasefire improved. Affected by this, U.S. stocks continued their upward trend. The Nasdaq Composite Index achieved a 13-day winning streak, setting the longest winning streak since 1992. The S&P 500 Index closed at a record high for three consecutive trading days, with both indices posting their largest weekly gains in nearly a year. All three major U.S. stock indices recorded three consecutive weeks of gains, with weekly gains of no less than 3% each.

The semiconductor sector index rose more than 2%, outperforming the broader market for two consecutive trading days. Microsoft and Tesla both gained more than 10% for the week; the travel, aviation, and cruise ship sectors performed strongly, with Royal Caribbean Cruises and United Airlines closing up more than 7% on the day; however, Netflix's stock fell nearly 10% due to its second-quarter earnings guidance falling short of market expectations.

After Iran announced the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, U.S. Treasury bond prices rose, and yields dropped sharply to a one-month low; the U.S. dollar index hit a one-and-a-half-month low intraday; the offshore RMB exchange rate once approached the 6.81 mark, near a three-year high, rebounding nearly 200 points from the day's low; Bitcoin broke through 78,000 US dollars intraday, setting a new high in more than two months, rising 5% from the day's low; international crude oil prices plummeted more than 10% intraday, closing at a new low in more than a month, with U.S. crude posting double-digit declines for two consecutive weeks; London aluminum prices fell more than 2%, bidding farewell to the four-year high set earlier.

Gold and silver prices rebounded. Gold rose more than 2% intraday, setting a one-month high and achieving three consecutive weeks of gains; silver futures rose nearly 6% intraday, rising for four consecutive weeks, setting the longest winning streak of the year.

During the Asian trading session, the ChiNext Index hit a nearly 11-year high, the optical communication sector performed explosively, Yuanjie Technology became the "new stock king", Kweichow Moutai's stock fell 4%, and the Hang Seng Tech Index fell 1%.

In the early opening of the Asian market on Monday, the Strait of Hormuz was blocked again. International crude oil opened with a jump of more than 7%, U.S. stock futures fell nearly 1%, and spot gold opened lower by more than 1%.

News

China

China and Vietnam jointly issued a statement, clarifying that they will promote the connection of their railway lines and realize interconnection with the railway networks of Central Asia and Europe.

It has been reported that DeepSeek is advancing its first financing round in history, planning to raise no less than 300 million US dollars with an estimated valuation exceeding 10 billion US dollars.

Lei Jun completed a live broadcast of the long-distance range test of the new Xiaomi SU7 from Beijing to Shanghai, which took 15 hours in total, with a driving distance of 1,313 kilometers and only one charge in the middle.

At the 2026 Humanoid Robot Half Marathon held in Beijing, the robot owned by Beijing Honor won the championship with a time of 48 minutes and 19 seconds. Unitree stated that its self-developed humanoid robot broke the human 1500-meter world record.

Orient Securities issued an announcement stating that the company is suspended from trading to plan the acquisition of 100% equity of Shanghai Securities.

Overseas

Last Friday, Trump confirmed that Iran had opened the Strait of Hormuz, stating that the situation in the strait had come to an end. He also said that the U.S. blockade on Iran will continue until the two sides reach an agreement, and predicted that the agreement will be reached within "one or two days". Trump revealed that the United States will obtain all of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles, while U.S. media reported that the United States is considering adopting a "Iranian funds in exchange for Iranian enriched uranium" approach to promote negotiations. Iran clarified the navigation conditions for the Strait of Hormuz, stating that it will never give up control of the strait, is currently negotiating a framework for a peace agreement with the United States, and refuses to transport enriched uranium abroad.

Last Saturday, the Iranian military opened fire to drive away an oil tanker, re-blocking the Strait of Hormuz less than 24 hours after announcing its opening, on the grounds that the United States violated its commitments and failed to lift the maritime blockade on Iranian ports and ships. Trump immediately convened a "War Room meeting", threatening to resume military strikes if the ceasefire deadline expires.

Last Sunday, Trump said that a U.S. delegation will arrive in Islamabad to participate in negotiations, and although Iran has "seriously violated" the ceasefire agreement, there is still a possibility that the United States and Iran will reach an agreement; the White House confirmed that Pence will participate in the talks. However, Iranian media subsequently stated that Iran refused to participate in the second round of negotiations with the United States, the previous news that the United States and Iran will hold a "second round of talks" in Islamabad is untrue, the prospect of negotiations is unclear, and as long as the United States continues to implement the maritime blockade, Iran will not participate in the negotiations. In addition, Trump also said that U.S. troops forcibly intercepted and took control of an Iranian cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman, and the Iranian military responded that it had launched drones to fight back.

Federal Reserve Governor Waller said that if the Middle East war can end quickly, the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut process is still expected to continue.

Anthropic launched the AI visual creation tool Claude Design, further enhancing the market competitiveness of its paid subscription services.

The global CPU shortage has intensified, with Intel and AMD processor prices rising by 15%, putting severe pressure on the PC supply chain.

Cerebras, an AI chip company known as a "Nvidia challenger", has submitted an IPO application again, and OpenAI has promised to purchase more than 20 billion US dollars of products from it.

According to relevant reports, AI programming assistant Cursor plans to raise 2 billion US dollars with an estimated valuation exceeding 50 billion US dollars, and Nvidia plans to participate in this follow-up investment.

Market Closing Quotes

European and American Stocks: The S&P 500 Index rose 1.20% to close at 7,126.06 points, with a cumulative weekly gain of 4.54%; the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.79% to close at 49,447.43 points, with a cumulative weekly gain of 3.19%; the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 1.52% to close at 24,468.48 points, with a cumulative weekly gain of 6.84%. The European STOXX 600 Index rose 1.56% to close at 626.58 points, with a cumulative weekly gain of 1.91%.

A-Shares: The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.10% to close at 4,051.43 points; the Shenzhen Component Index rose 0.60% to close at 14,885.42 points; the ChiNext Index rose 1.43% to close at 3,678.29 points; the CSI 300 Index fell 0.17% to close at 4,728.67 points.

Bond Market: In late trading, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was about 4.25%, down about 6 basis points on the day and about 7 basis points cumulatively for the week; the yield on the 2-year U.S. Treasury note was about 3.71%, down about 6 basis points on the day and about 9 basis points cumulatively for the week.

Commodities: The May WTI crude oil futures closed down 11.45% at 83.85 US dollars per barrel, with a cumulative weekly decline of 13.17%; the June Brent crude oil futures closed down 9.07% at 90.38 US dollars per barrel, with a cumulative weekly decline of 5.06%. The April COMEX gold futures closed up 1.51% at 4,857.6 US dollars per ounce, with a cumulative weekly gain of about 2%; the April COMEX silver futures closed up 3.98% at 81.738 US dollars per ounce, with a cumulative weekly gain of 7.09%. LME copper futures closed up nearly 0.6% at 13,347 US dollars per ton, with a cumulative weekly gain of 3.9%; LME aluminum futures closed down about 2.2% at 3,564 US dollars per ton, with a cumulative weekly gain of about 1.9%.

Detailed News

Global Heavyweight News

China

The China-Vietnam joint statement shows that the two sides will promote the connection of their railways and connect them to Central Asia and Europe. On this occasion, the two sides signed cooperation documents covering multiple fields including inter-party relations, public security, justice, economy, industrial and supply chains, customs, science and technology, people's livelihood, and media, and are committed to building a "higher-level and strategically significant China-Vietnam community with a shared future". The two sides clearly agreed to effectively implement the cooperation plan for aligning the Belt and Road Initiative and the "Two Corridors and One Circle" framework, promote the connection of their railways and interconnection with the railway networks of Central Asia and Europe, and actively participate in building a global clean energy partnership to advance the cooperation on power interconnection between the two countries.

It is reported that DeepSeek is advancing its first financing round in history, planning to raise no less than 300 million US dollars with an estimated valuation exceeding 10 billion US dollars. It is reported that DeepSeek's first native multimodal model V4 was originally scheduled to be launched in February this year but has been delayed multiple times; the model adopts the MoE architecture with a total parameter of about 1 trillion, and only about 37 billion parameters are activated per token, with the inference cost basically the same as that of V3; unlike all previous models of DeepSeek trained based on Nvidia chips, V4 will run on Huawei's latest Ascend chips.

DeepSeek recently quietly updated its DeepGEMM codebase and launched the Mega MoE technology. This technology integrates the originally scattered MoE processes, merging steps such as dispatch and linear transformation into a single mega-kernel, realizing the overlap of computing and communication of "computing while transmitting", effectively solving the inefficient problem of GPU "alternating between computing and waiting", which is like "transforming relay brick moving into a continuous conveyor belt", greatly improving the operating efficiency in multi-card scenarios.

Lei Jun completed a live broadcast of the long-distance range test of the new Xiaomi SU7 from Beijing to Shanghai, which took a total of 15 hours and 4 minutes. He set off from Beijing with a full charge at 6:35 in the morning, drove at the speed limit throughout the journey, and arrived at the Shanghai 5G Future Center at 21:40, with an actual driving distance of 1,313 kilometers. The final 100-kilometer energy consumption was 14.6kWh, with 3% remaining power and an estimated remaining range of 19 kilometers. He only charged once at the Linshu rest area in Shandong during the trip.

At the 2026 Humanoid Robot Half Marathon held in Beijing, the robot owned by Beijing Honor won the championship with a time of 48 minutes and 19 seconds. Unitree stated that its self-developed humanoid robot broke the human 1500-meter world record. The event kicked off in Yizhuang, Beijing on Sunday. Compared with the first event last year, the scale of this year's event was further upgraded: more than 100 teams competed together, nearly 40% of the contestants adopted the fully autonomous navigation mode, and the track integrated more than 10 types of terrain, including multiple bends close to 90 degrees.

Although the robot owned by Honor won the half marathon and its half marathon time has surpassed that of humans, the industry generally believes that the real test is not on the track. In one year, the half marathon time of humanoid robots has been greatly shortened from 2 hours and 40 minutes to 50 minutes, and no manual guidance is needed throughout the process; currently, Chinese enterprises account for 80% of the global humanoid robot shipments, and their cost curve is gradually replicating the price reduction path of lithium batteries. However, there are significant differences between the actual application scenarios in factories and the track. Behind this impressive score, the industry still faces many tests in practical applications.

Orient Securities issued an announcement stating that the company is planning to acquire 100% equity of Shanghai Securities by issuing A-shares and paying cash. Orient Securities' A-shares will be suspended from trading starting from the opening of the market on April 20, and the expected suspension period will not exceed 10 trading days.

TSMC's advanced packaging roadmap has been adjusted, with the CoWoS technology having a "longer life cycle", while the mass production time of the next-generation CoPoS technology "will not be until the fourth quarter of 2030 at the earliest". It is reported that the mass production time of CoPoS is about two years later than market expectations, mainly due to two major technical bottlenecks: "uniformity" and "warpage". At the same time, the production capacity of CoWoS in the next two years has been fully booked by core customers such as Nvidia, and the SoIC technology is planned to expand production to 50,000 wafers per month in 2027.

In the first quarter of this year, the shipment volume of Apple's iPhone in China increased by 20% year-on-year, ranking first in growth rate among major mobile phone brands. Huawei also was not affected by the overall market downturn, with a slight increase of 2% in shipment volume in the first quarter, maintaining the first place in the industry with a 20% market share. Currently, the soaring price of memory chips has pushed up the overall production cost of the industry, coupled with supply chain disruptions, the domestic smartphone market is under overall pressure.

Overseas

April 17 (Friday):

Trump confirmed that Iran had opened the Strait of Hormuz, stating that the situation in the strait had ended. He also said that the U.S. blockade on Iran will continue until the two sides reach an agreement, and predicted that the agreement will be reached within "one or two days". Trump revealed that Iran and the United States have cooperated to carry out mine-clearing work in the Strait of Hormuz; the United States has banned Israel from bombing Lebanon; the United States and Iran may hold talks this weekend, and most of the key terms of the agreement have been finalized, with subsequent progress to be announced soon. U.S. media said that the talks are likely to be held on Sunday. Iran's foreign minister said that during the ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, all merchant ships can pass through the Strait of Hormuz in accordance with the announced route; Iranian officials pointed out that the unfreezing of Iranian assets is one of the conditions for opening the strait. In addition, Britain and France plan to take the lead in launching international actions to ensure the freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.

Trump said that the United States will obtain all of Iran's enriched uranium stockpiles and transport them back to the United States without paying any money; he also denied the claim that "Iran will suspend its nuclear program for 20 years", saying that Iran's nuclear program suspension is indefinite. According to U.S. media reports, the United States is preparing to unfreeze 20 billion US dollars of Iranian funds in exchange for Iran abandoning its enriched uranium stockpiles. Currently, the United States and Iran are negotiating on issues such as the disposal method of Iran's enriched uranium and the specific amount of unfrozen Iranian assets, and one of the compromise proposals is to transport part of the highly enriched uranium to a third country.

Trump also said that the United States will not send military personnel to participate in the operation to remove Iran's enriched uranium, while Iran clearly refuses to transport enriched uranium abroad. In addition, Trump said that Iran has agreed to stop funding "proxy forces" in the Middle East such as Hezbollah in Lebanon. A spokesperson for Iran's foreign ministry said that demanding compensation for the losses suffered by Iran is a crucial issue in the negotiations between the United States and Iran.

Iran clarified the navigation conditions for the Strait of Hormuz, is currently negotiating a framework for a peace agreement with the United States, and warned that if the United States continues to implement the maritime blockade, it will close the strait again. The specific navigation conditions include: civilian ships must pass through the route designated by Iran; military ships are still prohibited from passing; all ships must obtain permission from the Iranian Navy to pass. Iranian officials said that the United States and Iran are drafting a memorandum of understanding to set an overall framework for the final conclusion of a permanent peace agreement. The memorandum will set a 60-day follow-up negotiation window, and Iran is optimistic about signing the memorandum during the negotiations in the next few days. Iran's foreign ministry emphasized that the maritime blockade implemented by the United States violates the ceasefire agreement, and if the blockade continues, Iran will take necessary countermeasures. The U.S. military said that it is still "closely monitoring every Iranian port" and has announced the location of the maritime blockade line for the first time, which covers all southern coasts and ports of Iran.

Iran's speaker said that the 7 statements made by Trump within one hour are "all untrue", and Iran will never give up control of the Strait of Hormuz; Iran's deputy foreign minister said that it does not accept a temporary ceasefire and demands a complete end to the conflict. The Iranian military emphasized that the opening of the Strait of Hormuz is conditional and temporary.

Market news shows that 20 minutes before Iran announced the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a mysterious trader placed a 760 million US dollar short order to accurately short crude oil. This is the third large-scale short order that appeared before the announcement of major policies in the past two months, with a total scale of more than 2.2 billion US dollars. Currently, the U.S. regulatory agency CFTC has launched an investigation into the relevant transactions.

Weekend:

April 18 (Saturday): The Iranian military opened fire to drive away an oil tanker, re-blocking the Strait of Hormuz less than 24 hours after its opening. The Iranian military said that due to the United States violating the ceasefire commitment and failing to lift the maritime blockade on Iranian ports and ships, it re-blocked the Strait of Hormuz starting from the evening of the 18th. Iran's supreme leader said that the Iranian Navy is fully prepared to inflict a "new painful defeat" on the enemy. India's foreign ministry summoned the Iranian ambassador over the attack on an Indian oil tanker.

Currently, the U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement has "three days left". Israeli forces attacked Lebanon, Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, and Trump convened another "War Room meeting" on Saturday. According to reports, a U.S. senior official warned that if there is no breakthrough in negotiations in the short term, the war may resume within a few days; the U.S. military plans to board and seize Iranian-related ships sailing in international waters in the next few days. Trump threatened on Saturday that he will not extend the ceasefire, and if the ceasefire expires, the United States will resume dropping bombs.

Iranian media reported that after the visit of senior Pakistani military officials, the mediator of the negotiations, to Iran, the U.S. side put forward new negotiation proposals, which Iran is currently reviewing. Iran's speaker disclosed details of the U.S.-Iran negotiations on April 11-12 on Saturday: "I told the U.S. side 'if you take one more step, we will definitely open fire', and finally the U.S. side asked for 15 minutes and ordered a retreat."

April 20 (Sunday): Trump said that a U.S. delegation will arrive in Islamabad to participate in negotiations, and although Iran has "seriously violated" the ceasefire agreement, there is still a possibility that the United States and Iran will reach an agreement. Trump said that the U.S. side has put forward a "very fair and reasonable" agreement. "I hope they accept it, because if they don't, the United States will destroy every power plant and every bridge in Iran. The days of being easy-going are over." He also said that if the United States and Iran reach an agreement, he is "very likely" to go to Islamabad.

According to U.S. media reports on Sunday, Iranian sources said that the Iranian delegation will arrive on the 21st (Tuesday), including Iran's speaker of the parliament Qalibaf and Iran's foreign minister Araghchi. The report also said that it is expected that the United States and Iran will jointly announce the extension of the ceasefire on the 22nd.

Trump once denied that U.S. Vice President Pence will attend the new round of negotiations. Iranian sources said that if Pence does not attend the relevant negotiations, senior Iranian officials such as Iran's speaker of the parliament Qalibaf will not be part of the negotiation team. Later, the White House clarified that Pence will go to Pakistan to participate in the talks.

Iranian media said that Iran refused to participate in the second round of negotiations with the United States, the previous news that the United States and Iran will hold a "second round of talks" in Islamabad is untrue, the prospect of negotiations is unclear; Iran emphasized that as long as the United States continues to implement the maritime blockade, the negotiations will not be carried out. A senior member of Iran's parliament said that the United States must accept the new order of the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran plans to introduce a Strait of Hormuz Management Law to ban ships related to Israel from passing through.

Trump said on Sunday that U.S. troops forcibly intercepted and took control of an Iranian cargo ship in the Gulf of Oman. The Iranian military responded that U.S. troops opened fire on the Iranian cargo ship, and Iran launched drones to fight back. Another Iranian oil tanker successfully broke through the U.S. blockade and entered Iranian waters.

It is reported that this is the first oil tanker to pass through the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. military implemented the blockade. According to data released by the ship tracking website vesselfinder on April 17, an oil tanker flying the Pakistani flag sailed into the Persian Gulf, becoming the first oil tanker carrying crude oil to sail out through the Strait of Hormuz since the United States implemented the blockade on April 13.

After the situation in the Strait of Hormuz fell into a stalemate, the market speculated that the United States may shift its strategic focus to the Strait of Malacca. It is reported that the United States has signed a defense agreement with Indonesia, seeking greater access to Indonesia's airspace to strengthen its military presence in the Strait of Malacca. India expressed concern, believing that against the background of the continuous tense situation in the Strait of Hormuz, the United States is extending its strategic focus to the Strait of Malacca. The Strait of Malacca carries more than 40% of global cargo transportation and is a key channel for global energy and commodity trade. Currently, the stalemate in the Strait of Hormuz is difficult to resolve, the prospect of U.S.-Iran negotiations is unclear, and the global supply chain is under continuous pressure.

Federal Reserve Governor Waller said that if the Middle East war can end quickly, the Federal Reserve's interest rate cut process is still expected to continue. Waller also warned that if the Middle East war continues, it will bring risks to U.S. inflation and the job market; the current energy price shock can no longer be ignored.

Anthropic launched the AI visual creation tool Claude Design, further enhancing the competitiveness of its paid subscription services. Based on the visual model Claude Opus 4.7, this tool allows users to generate visual content such as design drafts, prototypes, presentations, and marketing materials through dialogue, and is currently only open to paid subscription users. Directly targeting the productivity scenarios of enterprises and professional users, this tool is expected to further enhance the market competitiveness of Anthropic's paid subscription products.

The previously high-profile Claude Code desktop version launched by Anthropic was collectively criticized by users, who rated it as "unusable". User feedback shows that more than 40 bugs were found within one hour of use, with frequent basic problems such as lagging, crashing, input box disappearance, and thread freezing. More ironically, this company that claims to be "100% AI-coded" has been exposed to have serious engineering defects in its code, including a single function with 3,167 lines and 12 layers of nesting. Some views hold that while AI improves efficiency, it also amplifies the company's technical debt problem.

Claude has recently been exposed to "performance degradation + disguised price increase", causing dissatisfaction among heavy users. It is reported that the reasoning ability of Anthropic's model has dropped sharply, falling from the top 2 to the 10th in third-party tests, and its performance in complex tasks has significantly degraded. The official admitted that to control costs, the model is by default adjusted to the "medium effort" mode, and at the same time hides the thinking process and shortens the cache time, further exacerbating the shrinkage of user experience. On the other hand, the enterprise subscription model has changed from monthly subscription to pay-as-you-go, with the highest cost increasing by three times. Against the background of increasing computing power pressure and restricted use of high-consumption tools, the launch of Opus 4.7 and AI design tools will impact industry players such as Adobe and Figma.

Some analysts believe that the iteration of Opus 4.7 is not aimed at "building the strongest model". Although this version has greatly improved in programming and visual capabilities, its long-context processing capability has plummeted from 78.3% to 32.2%, its search capability has been surpassed by competitors, and there are three hidden price increases. This is not an iteration of pursuing the "strongest" model, but a precise trade-off by Anthropic. Analysts point out that Anthropic is laying out a longer-term development: restoring user trust, drilling safety barriers, and cultivating user habits, while the view of simply boasting about its "strongest model" can no longer keep up with its development rhythm.

The global CPU shortage continues to intensify, with Intel and AMD processor prices generally rising by 10% to 15%, putting severe pressure on the PC supply chain. Due to AI enterprises occupying a large amount of CPU production capacity, the inventories of Intel and AMD processors have been in short supply. Unlike memory, which is "expensive but available", CPUs are currently in a "priced but unavailable" dilemma, putting great pressure on PC manufacturers, and this situation is difficult to ease in the short term.

Cerebras, an AI chip company known as a "Nvidia challenger", has submitted an IPO application again. OpenAI has promised to purchase more than 20 billion US dollars of products from it in the next three years and obtain part of its shares. Cerebras' core competitive strategy is to use ultra-large-size chips (processing massive data at one time with a single large chip) to compete with Nvidia. Its CEO said that Cerebras' chips are much faster than Nvidia's similar products when running AI models.

According to relevant reports, AI programming assistant Cursor plans to raise 2 billion US dollars with an estimated valuation exceeding 50 billion US dollars, and Nvidia plans to participate in this follow-up investment. Existing investor Andreessen Horowitz is expected to co-lead this round of financing, and Thrive Capital is also in negotiations to participate. Since the negotiations have not yet concluded, the final terms may still change.

Selected Research Reports

Hedge funds make record bets on U.S. Treasury bonds, Apollo warns: Once a reversal occurs, it may trigger a global bond market "shock wave". Apollo's chief economist said that the proportion of hedge funds' positions in the 31 trillion US dollar U.S. Treasury bond market has risen to a record 8%, with more than 6 trillion US dollars of leveraged funds driven behind it. Once these high-leverage positions are forced to close, it may transmit a "shock wave" to the global fixed-income market. If there is severe volatility, its impact will quickly spread to the stock, corporate bond, mortgage, and various financing markets.

Bank of America's Hartnett said that the current U.S. stock rebound is evolving into a "bull trap". As the Nasdaq Composite Index sets a 15-year longest winning streak and technology stocks continue to boom, Bank of America's chief strategist Hartnett issued a warning: after a record 172.2 billion US dollars of cash outflows from the market, funds are chasing gains frantically. The market switched from oversold to overbought in only 11 trading days, which is the second fastest since 1982 - this rapid rebound is evolving into a costly "bull trap".

CTA funds start an epic U.S. stock cover-up: 86 billion US dollars of purchases in a single week, with an additional 70 billion US dollars expected to be added in the next week. Goldman Sachs data shows that quantitative CTA funds bought 86 billion US dollars of U.S. stocks frantically in the past five trading days, which can be called "one of the largest purchases in history". More surprisingly, even if the market fluctuates sideways in the next five days, there are still about 70 billion US dollars of "passive" buying waiting to enter the market. Historical backtest data shows that under similar circumstances, the S&P 500 Index has an average gain of 8.18% in three months, and institutional funds have also accelerated their follow-up - this systematic buying wave may be reshaping the medium-term trend of U.S. stocks.

Goldman Sachs said that the upward trend of U.S. stocks is difficult to resist, but a short-term correction is the healthiest. The current U.S. stock market positions are still extremely bearish, far below the level of excessive crowding, which can be said to be the most bullish signal of the market, because it ensures the continuous chasing behavior. Having said that, Goldman Sachs trader Cullen Morgan wrote: "We have rebounded quickly and sharply, and signs of chasing/overbuying have begun to appear. Next, a short-term correction may be the healthiest thing for this market, but the overall upward trend seems difficult to resist."

Changjiang Securities issued a research report saying that the consumer market has strong resilience, which can be confirmed by population, purchasing power, and related consumer cases. The research report believes that the trend of the rise of low-tier cities and the improvement of residents' purchasing power under the low inflation environment have not been fully priced by the market. Driven by population sinking and income growth in central and western regions, low-tier city consumption has become a new growth engine; at the same time, the optimization of the manufacturing supply chain has expanded the "consumer surplus", improving residents' actual purchasing power. Consumer cases such as blueberries and automobiles have confirmed the structural resilience of "price reduction promoting quality improvement". With the entry of new consumer enterprises, this asset pricing gap is expected to be bridged.

Domestic Macroeconomics

The executive meeting of the State Council made it clear that it is necessary to further implement the strategy of upgrading free trade pilot zones. The meeting pointed out that facing the new situation and new tasks, it is necessary to reform and improve the institutional mechanism of free trade pilot zones, further optimize the layout and enhance the level, so as to better serve the overall national development.

The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued the latest relevant policies, targeting various illegal share reductions. On April 17, the CSRC issued a draft for comments on new regulations on penalties for illegal share reductions, classifying illegal transfer behaviors into three categories according to the degree of harm: transfer of original shares during the restricted period (the most serious), over-proportion and illegal disclosure of share reductions (the second most serious), and failure to suspend trading (separate discretion). The penalty intensity is linked to the transfer amount, and the threshold for severe punishment is a share reduction exceeding 5% of the total share capital and an amount exceeding 500 million yuan.

The CSRC plans to clarify that illegal gains refer to the benefits obtained or losses avoided through illegal acts, and the profits and losses from multiple illegal acts shall not be offset against each other. The CSRC publicly solicited opinions on the Measures for the Determination of Illegal Gains in Administrative Penalty Cases. The measures clarify that illegal gains refer to the benefits obtained or losses avoided through illegal acts; illegal gains from transactions deduct direct costs, and illegal gains from non-transactions are determined according to the full amount of income; the profits and losses from multiple illegal acts shall not be offset against each other; and the calculation rules for situations such as insider trading and market manipulation are refined.

Seven platforms were punished for involving "ghost takeout", with a total fine and confiscation of nearly 3.6 billion yuan, including 1.522 billion yuan for Pinduoduo, 746 million yuan for Meituan, and 630 million yuan for Alibaba Group. On April 17, the State Administration for Market Regulation imposed administrative penalties on seven e-commerce platforms including Pinduoduo, Meituan, JD.com, Taobao Flash Purchase, Douyin, Taobao, and Tmall, on the grounds of inadequate review of the qualifications of online food operators and failure to prevent order transfer behaviors. The relevant platforms were ordered to suspend the addition of new cake stores for 3 to 9 months, with a total fine and confiscation of 3.597 billion yuan; the legal representatives and food safety directors of the seven platforms were fined a total of 196.874 million yuan. At present, all platforms have removed the relevant "ghost stores" and stopped order transfer cooperation.

Domestic Companies

North Huachuang's 2025 revenue increased by more than 30%, net profit decreased slightly, and the dividend amount reached 5.5 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 100% of the annual net profit. This leading semiconductor equipment enterprise's 2025 operating income increased by 30.85% year-on-year, exceeding 39 billion yuan for the first time, confirming the strong demand in the industry under the wave of domestic substitution. The full-year net profit attributable to the parent company decreased slightly by 1.77% year-on-year to 5.522 billion yuan, of which the single-quarter net profit attributable to the parent company in the fourth quarter plummeted to 392 million yuan, a month-on-month drop of nearly 80%. The company plans to distribute a cash dividend of 7.62 yuan per 10 shares (before tax) based on 724 million shares, with a total dividend of about 5.5 billion yuan, accounting for nearly 100% of the annual net profit.

The rare earth market showed a trend of rising both volume and price. North Rare Earth's 2025 operating income hit a record high, net profit doubled, and it plans to pay a dividend of 0.13 yuan per share. Driven by the overall upward trend of rare earth market prices and the record high production and sales volume of the company itself, North Rare Earth achieved an operating income of 42.563 billion yuan in 2025, a year-on-year increase of 29.11%, and the net profit attributable to listed shareholders reached 2.251 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 124.17%. The fourth quarter became the strongest period of the year - the single-quarter operating income reached 12.272 billion yuan and the net profit attributable to the parent company reached 710 million yuan in the fourth quarter, both the highest among all quarters of the year.

Hikvision's 2025 net profit increased by 19% year-on-year to 14.2 billion yuan, and its 2026 Q1 operating income returned to double-digit growth. Hikvision's 2025 annual report and 2026 Q1 quarterly report show that the company's profit quality and cash flow have been restored. In 2025, the operating income was 92.5 billion yuan, a slight increase of 0.01%, and the net profit was 14.195 billion yuan, an increase of 18.5% year-on-year; the operating cash flow was 25.3 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 91%. In the first quarter of 2026, the company's operating income increased by 11.8% to 20.7 billion yuan, and the net profit increased by 36.4% to 2.78 billion yuan. The Guanlan large model drives the landing of the company's AI business, with significant quantitative results.

Yihai Kerry Arawana's 2025 non-net profit surged by 194%, and its operating income increased by 2.9% year-on-year to 245.1 billion yuan. Yihai Kerry Arawana achieved an operating income of 245.126 billion yuan in 2025, a slight increase of 2.87% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the parent company was 3.153 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.01%; the non-net profit was 2.845 billion yuan, a year-on-year surge of 193.68%. The sharp rebound in profits was mainly due to the improvement of the flour and rice business and the recovery of soybean crushing profits. Among them, the kitchen food business achieved both volume and profit growth, the feed raw material business benefited from the high prosperity of the soybean meal market, and the oil technology business was under certain pressure.

Yuanjie Technology's stock price soared by 1500% in one year, surpassing Kweichow Moutai to become the "new king" of A-shares, and its core competitiveness has attracted market attention. Yuanjie Technology currently has a valuation of 650 times, but its profit is only a fraction of that of Kweichow Moutai. Its core advantage lies in seizing the optical communication "light source" field - laser chips. Benefiting from the explosive growth of AI data centers and the CPO industry trend, the company's data center-related business income surged by 719%. It has built industry barriers with CW technology and IDM mode, and at the same time, accelerated production expansion and planned listing in Hong Kong to further amplify capital expectations.

The Securities Association of China issued a heavy document, clarifying the brokerage salary clawback system, which also applies to resigned and retired personnel. The document clarifies that the salary clawback system also applies to resigned and retired personnel, who should actively cooperate. A new long-term assessment requirement is added: the assessment of senior management and core backbones of securities companies shall include long-term indicators of 3 years or more. If the salary needs to be deferred, the starting year of deferred payment shall not be earlier than the 2nd year (T+2 year) after the performance salary attribution year (T year).

TSMC plans to start trial production of advanced processes below 1nm in 2029, and Apple is expected to be the first to adopt this process. TSMC plans to start mass production of the 1.4nm process in 2028; the trial production of the sub-nanometer process (below 1nm) will follow in 2029, with an initial monthly production target of 5,000 wafers. If the sub-nanometer process progresses as scheduled, Apple is expected to be the first customer, continuing its generational gap advantage in the mobile chip field.

Overseas Macroeconomics

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson issued a heated warning, saying that the United States needs to formulate an "emergency plan" to deal with the risk of a collapse in demand for U.S. Treasury bonds. Paulson rarely said that once the U.S. Treasury bond market collapses, its destructiveness will be far greater than that of the 2008 financial crisis - at that time, the U.S. government itself will face financing difficulties and be unable to act as a market rescuer. He called on the United States to prepare a "break-the-glass" emergency plan in advance, because "when we hit that wall, it will be very violent".

Since the Iran-related conflict began, 12 countries have been unable to bear the impact and sought assistance. India has characterized this impact as "equivalent to the COVID-19 pandemic". The IMF president revealed that at least 12 countries have sought loans from the IMF to cope with the energy impact brought by the Iran conflict, with potential assistance needs ranging from 20 billion to 50 billion US dollars, and the list of countries seeking assistance is still expanding. The IMF also warned that the global economy is drifting towards a more pessimistic scenario, and in the worst case, the global economic growth rate may drop to 2% in 2026. Meanwhile, Indian officials said that the severity of this impact is "equivalent to the COVID-19 pandemic", and India has planned a stress scenario where oil prices rise to 120 US dollars per barrel.

Britain and France held a summit on the security of the Strait of Hormuz. France refused to allow the NATO Secretary-General to attend, and the United States was absent from the summit. Britain and France hosted a summit on the security of the Strait of Hormuz in Paris on Friday, putting forward a "three-step" solution: the first step is coordination and cooperation at the diplomatic and political level; the second step is to provide logistical support for ships stranded in the strait that need assistance to leave; the third step is to "provide military guarantees for freedom of navigation". However, there are obvious differences among all parties, and the summit did not reach a substantive consensus.

Overseas Companies

U.S. data center construction is facing the "triple dilemma" of "lack of electricity, lack of people, and lack of equipment". 40% of the data centers planned to be completed may be delayed, and AI giants are facing the problem of being "choked" by computing power. The myth of U.S. AI infrastructure expansion is facing a severe reality. Nearly 40% of the data centers planned to be completed this year are at risk of delay. Among them, only one of the six planned facilities in OpenAI's 1.4GW core park in Texas has started construction, and Microsoft's related data center projects are also under pressure. The key projects of giants are expected to be delayed by more than three months. The superposition of the three major bottlenecks of power shortage, worker shortage, and equipment shortage has led to a comprehensive revaluation of the return timeline of more than 700 billion US dollars of capital expenditure of ultra-large cloud vendors.

Good news came for AMD's next-generation chips, which are reported to have won a large order from Anthropic. Due to the continuous shortage of AI computing power, AMD's next-generation MI450 chips are reported to have won a large order from Anthropic, which is another top customer after Meta and OpenAI. The performance of this chip is double that of the previous generation, directly targeting Nvidia's Rubin platform. While consolidating its business territory, AMD has also deepened its supercomputing cooperation with the French government, showing that it is accelerating the reshaping of the industry procurement pattern under the background of tight computing power.

The memory industry ushered in an era of change. Samsung officially closed the order window for old memory, and the industry accelerated the migration to the next-generation memory products. Samsung Electronics officially stopped accepting new orders for LPDDR4 and LPDDR4X mobile DRAM, marking that these two mainstream memory products that have been mass-produced for more than ten years have entered the end of their life cycle. The relevant production lines are expected to start conversion in the first quarter of next year, and Samsung will use this to accelerate the migration to higher-performance memory processes.

Samsung shortened the HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) development cycle from 2 years to 1 year, keeping up with Nvidia's rhythm and striving for a larger market share. Samsung Electronics announced that it will shorten the research and development cycle of High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) from two years to one year to keep up with the product launch rhythm of AI accelerator customers such as Nvidia, and further embed itself into the core chain of the AI hardware ecosystem. Samsung's highly vertically integrated production system gives it obvious advantages in shortening the R&D cycle and ensuring the coordinated progress of all links.

Driven by AI technology efficiency improvement, Meta plans to launch the first round of layoffs on May 20, with a scale of about 8,000 people, accounting for 10% of the global total number of employees. It is reported that Meta will carry out more layoffs in the second half of the year, and the annual layoff ratio may exceed 20%.

Aviation fuel prices have soared, and global airlines have entered a "self-protection mode", increasing the number of flight cancellations before the arrival of the summer peak season. Most European airlines have sufficient fuel hedging protection in the next few months, while U.S. airlines - the largest group in global capacity - generally do not conduct fuel hedging, directly exposing themselves to the impact of rising oil prices and having to reduce operating costs by canceling flights.

The memory crisis has further deepened. DRAM manufacturers expect to only meet 60% of the market demand by 2027, and a multi-year shortage may be a foregone conclusion.

Industry/Concepts

1. Honor Concept Stocks | According to Shanghai Securities News, the Honor humanoid robot won the championship in the half marathon, using a self-developed liquid cooling system. The 2026 Beijing Yizhuang Humanoid Robot Half Marathon was successfully held on the 19th. The participating robots have evolved from "stumbling" last year to "running fast". The Honor "Flash" robot from the Monkey King Team won the championship with a net time of 50 minutes and 26 seconds in the autonomous navigation mode, which is faster than the human half marathon record of 57 minutes and 20 seconds, and significantly faster than the 2 hours and 40 minutes of the champion humanoid robot in the same event last year.

2. Pig Raising Concept | According to Shanghai Securities News, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs held a forum on the development of the pig industry on April 17. The meeting emphasized the need to further improve the comprehensive regulation policy of pig production capacity, take effective measures to promote the reasonable recovery of pig prices; accelerate the elimination of low-yield and elderly sows and weak piglets, strictly control new production capacity, and promote the simultaneous implementation of production capacity regulation, environmental protection supervision and other policies; guide and urge breeding enterprises to sell pigs in a timely manner, leading enterprises should take the lead in implementing production capacity reduction requirements, and avoid blind expansion in combination with environmental protection, asset-liability and other constraints.

3. Commercial Aerospace | According to Shanghai Securities News, the key tasks of China's aerospace industry this year were officially released, and reusable rockets have attracted attention. On April 17, at the press conference of the 2026 "China Aerospace Day" held by the China National Space Administration, relevant responsible persons reviewed the major progress of China's aerospace industry in 2025 and released information on important tasks in 2026. In 2026, China's aerospace tasks will continue to be implemented intensively: Tianwen-2 will approach the target asteroid and carry out close-up detection; the manned spaceflight project will implement the Shenzhou 23 and other manned spaceflight missions; multiple types of reusable rockets will carry out flight verification and other related work.

4. Memory | According to China Securities News, Samsung Electronics is fully promoting the research and development process of its next-generation High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) products, striving to further consolidate its advantages in the high-end artificial intelligence memory market. It is reported that Samsung Electronics plans to produce the first batch of HBM4E samples that meet Nvidia's standards as early as May 2026, and its goal is to allow the foundry department to successfully produce samples of HBM4E core logic chips before mid-next month.

5. Copper Foil | The research team led by Researcher Lu Lei from the Shenyang National Laboratory for Materials Science, Institute of Metal Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has successfully developed a "super copper foil" with ultra-high strength, high conductivity and excellent thermal stability, effectively solving the long-standing "trade-off" dilemma between strength and ductility, conductivity, and thermal stability of copper foil. The newly developed "super copper foil" has a tensile strength of up to 900 MPa, breaking the strength limit of conventional copper foil; at the same time, the conductivity of this copper foil is about twice that of copper alloys with the same strength level; its performance has no attenuation after being placed at room temperature for nearly half a year, successfully overcoming the industry problem that strength, conductivity and thermal stability are difficult to achieve at the same time.

Today's News Preview

1. China will announce the April 1-year and 5-year Loan Prime Rate (LPR).

2. Huawei will hold a new product launch event for the Pura series, during which the Huawei AI Glasses will be released.

3. U.S. Customs will start tariff refund work on April 20.

4. SanDisk officially joins the Nasdaq 100 Index.

5. The U.S.-Iran ceasefire agreement is approaching the deadline (late night of April 21, U.S. Eastern Time), and the market will closely monitor the possibility and prospect of U.S.-Iran negotiations.

Risk Warning and Disclaimer

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