On Thursday Eastern Time, the three major US stock indexes collectively closed lower. As of the close, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.98%, the Nasdaq fell 0.64%, and the S&P 500 index fell 0.46%.
Meta experienced a significant drop of over 10%, with its market value evaporating by approximately $130 billion. The company's Q1 performance exceeded expectations, but Q2 revenue guidance fell short of expectations, and it is expected that capital expenditures will increase significantly throughout the year; IBM fell more than 8%, Microsoft fell more than 2%, and Google and Amazon fell more than 1%; Tesla rose by about 5%, NVIDIA rose by over 3%, and Netflix and Intel rose by over 1%.
Popular Chinese concept stocks fluctuated, with Tencent Music and JD.com rising more than 1%, while Baidu, Alibaba, NetEase, and Xiaopeng Motors saw a slight increase. Bilibili, Ideal Automobile, Futu Holdings, Pinduoduo, Weibo fell more than 1%, while NIO and Vipshop saw a slight decline.
Global News
The GDP growth of 1.6% in the first quarter of the United States was significantly lower than expected
Before the US stock market opened on Thursday (April 25th), the latest report released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis showed that the real GDP growth rate in the first quarter of the US was significantly lower than expected, triggering a short-term drop in US stock futures. Specific data shows that the actual GDP of the United States increased by 1.6% on an annualized basis in Q1 2024, the lowest since Q1 2023, which is 0.9 percentage points lower than the market expectation of 2.5%. In the fourth quarter of 2023, this indicator was 3.4%.
Multiple regional banks in the United States experience a sharp drop in profits, with the Federal Reserve warning of commercial real estate risks
After the bankruptcy crisis last year, it seems that the pain of banks in the United States is not over yet. The latest situation shows that operational pressure may mean that financial institutions need to sell assets to maintain balance sheet stability, while Federal Reserve policy may increase the pressure on asset price fluctuations. SPDR's S&P regional bank ETF has fallen by about 13% this year, far behind the performance of large banks. The Federal Reserve stated in its semi annual financial stability report released last week that banks with higher exposure to commercial real estate and consumer loans may suffer greater losses.
Oak Capital Max's hot comment AI: It's very like a foam that can't determine the "winner of the stock market"!
Oak Capital co-founder Howard Marks recently stated that artificial intelligence (AI) may ultimately change the world, but this alone cannot determine the success of related assets. He said in an interview, "Every foam starts with a common belief. Everyone believes in AI, and they offer high prices for AI's beneficiary targets. Facts show that this is a bit excessive."
European Central Bank Regulatory Commission: Inflation may remain stubborn and may not continue to lower interest rates after June's rate cut
On Wednesday, April 24th local time, Joachim Nagel, a member of the European Central Bank's governing committee and President of the German Bundesbank, stated that inflation in the eurozone may still be stubborn, so the European Central Bank may not necessarily further relax its policies after cutting interest rates in June. The three key interest rates in the Eurozone, namely refinancing rate, deposit mechanism rate, and marginal lending rate, are currently 4.50%, 4.00%, and 4.75%, respectively. The market generally expects that the European Central Bank will cut interest rates at its June interest rate meeting, becoming the first major central bank in the world to initiate a rate cutting cycle.
Company News
Meta's net profit doubled in the first quarter, AI investment drove up annual expenses, causing concerns
Social media giant Meta released a robust first quarter financial report, but the further increase in AI (artificial intelligence) capital expenditures and lower than expected revenue guidance for the next quarter have raised concerns among investors, causing the company's stock price to fall more than 15% in after hours trading. On April 24th local time, Meta announced its first quarter results for the fiscal year 2024 as of March 31st, with a revenue of $36.455 billion, a 27% increase from the same period last year and higher than market expectations of $36.14 billion; Net profit increased by 117% year-on-year to $12.369 billion; Diluted earnings per share increased by 114% year-on-year to $4.71, higher than market expectations of $4.32.
Apple's open-source big model OpenELM is here, it may be used on the next generation iPhone
On April 25th, according to VentureBeat, Apple recently released the OpenELM big model on the AI code community Hugging Face. This is a series of open-source large-scale language models composed of different parameter sizes, which can run on end-to-end devices. According to Interface News, this series of models includes four different parameter versions: 270 million, 450 million, 1.1 billion, and 3 billion. Based on a small number of parameters, these models can run independently on end-to-end devices without the need to connect to cloud servers. Specifically, it includes a total of 4 pre trained models and 4 instruction tuning models.
Promoting AI chip cost reduction and efficiency improvement: Nvidia's acquisition of two startups
Nvidia is taking action again! After investing in over 30 startups last year, the company has recently invested in two more artificial intelligence startups, Run: ai and Deci. On April 24th local time, Nvidia announced that it had signed a final acquisition agreement with Run: ai. The company believes that this can help customers more effectively utilize their AI computing resources.
TSMC's A16 chip technology will be launched in 2026! A "war" with Intel is about to unfold
TSMC announced on Wednesday (April 24th) that a new chip manufacturing technology called "A16", which the company is currently developing, will be put into production in the second half of 2026. At that time, TSMC will engage in a "big battle" with its long-term competitor Intel for cutting-edge chips. TSMC is the world's largest advanced chip foundry manufacturer and a major partner of Nvidia and Apple.
Is Musk in a hurry? Tesla has been exposed for breaking contracts with fresh graduates!
On April 24th, the topic of "Tesla being exposed for breaking contracts with fresh graduates" became a hot topic on Weibo. Several fresh graduates expressed on social media that they had been unilaterally terminated by Tesla after receiving their job offers. At the end of the spring recruitment period, this "cost reduction and efficiency increase" strategy undoubtedly brought many inconveniences to their job search.
Memory market warmth returns! SK Hynix welcomes a surge in performance: Q1 revenue growth reaches a 14 year high
On Thursday local time, SK Hynix, the world's second largest memory chip manufacturer, released strong first quarter financial reports. SK Hynix predicts that with the surge in demand for artificial intelligence, the memory chip market will fully recover. However, despite the strong financial performance of SK Hynix, earlier Thursday, the performance outlook of US tech giant Meta was poor, and the plan to increase capital expenditure also raised market concerns, which also affected SK Hynix, which also planned to increase capital expenditure. Its stock price fell on Thursday.