Bloomberg Markets: China Open 02/15/2024

Bloomberg Markets: China Open” is the definitive guide to the markets in Hong Kong and on the mainland. David Ingles and Haslinda Amin bring you the latest news and analysis to get you ready for the trading day. And powered by more than 27-hundred journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries, we get you the global stories that will impact the region’s markets
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Good morning from the Asia Pacific. It’s 9 a.m. here in Hong Kong, in Beijing and in Shanghai. Welcome to Bloomberg Markets china open. I’m David Ingles. Let’s get to your top stories today. The Japanese economy unexpectedly slips into a recession, clouding the central bank’s path towards ending negative

Interest rates and also had stocks across the region modestly higher following this rally on Wall Street. Robust earnings helping overcome concerns about persistent inflation. And I’m Haslinda Amin in Jakarta, where Prabowo Subianto has declared victory in Indonesia’s presidential election. The former general accused of human rights abuses now calling for national unity. Yep.

And Jakarta comes on line market wise in about an hours from now. Walter takes us back to just reminding our viewers that only one market remains shut in the region. That’s the mainland mainland Chinese markets. All that being said, the price action of

Effectively most of the China proxies out there are pointing to a rally when this market opens up, assuming nothing changes from today to tomorrow. A lot could happen, though, to still to a full trading days left. That being said, of course, reason I mentioned that is that just a massive

Move up in the Golden Dragon index up overnight. So this might actually go into the tailwinds going into today. You have, of course, this rally on Wall Street. You have this on the specific benchmark and the Nasdaq as well. A50 futures coming on line over in Singapore which by the way, released GDP

Numbers. Lots to unpack in singapore and in Japan in just a moment there mild bounce across markets in the asia pacific. A pullback as you can see on your screens on a50 futures up the Japan is back will not japan’s nikkei is back to be more specific.

Okay have to be more granular here back above 38,000. That then puts us about 3% give or take from all time highs. We’ll talk about the economy in just a moment there. Unexpected contraction in the final three months of of 2023. So two straight now Taiwan is coming back online.

So there is an element of catch up there. It’s been shot, of course, for several days, 3.3% to the upside in Taiwan. Interesting. A lot of news flow coming out of that last market. You see on your screens. Australia see a jobs numbers coming out to the RBA also speaking as well,

Talking about well well, let me start with the RBA. Of course that’s coming in effectively talking about how the path of rates outside Australia will have an impact on when and what they can do inside Australia’s fourth monetary policy is concerned.

Now all that being said, when you look at the domestic numbers coming through in the jobs numbers which came through about 30 minutes back, does indicate that they might need to move sooner. That’s certainly what the market is doing right now with this pullback we’re seeing in the Aussie dollar 481 jobs

Created in January. There are more people in my flight coming back than the Australian economy created jobs in the whole month. Of course, that’s a very difficult, of course, economic indicator to the track. In any case, of course the US curve comes down to this. We’re lower today. We were lower overnight.

We’re still though, as the entire curve is concerned, above way above levels, still before the CPI print came out. In terms of just pricing on, you know, where the Fed is going to be. So the Fed’s told us three markets started out the year it’s seven cuts.

We’ve now close that gap to about one rate cut. So it’s 3 to 4 out of the market based on current pricing as we speak. Okay. Let’s talk more about Japan. Have a look at this chart. Two straight quarters of contraction

There in the Japanese economy. What does the BOJ do now with its information and what actually led actually to to this pullback, unexpected pullback in growth and a contraction? You see a minor one, but of course, technical recession of two straight quarters.

Let’s well, let’s bring in Peter Jackson, of course, he’s with us and Paul Jackson, our Japan economy and government editor out of Tokyo. Well, Paul, let’s I guess we can talk about policy implications in a couple of minutes. But I want to talk to you about what

What led to this pullback, because it seems that this caught economists off guard. Hey, look, I think this is a sign that inflation really is grinding on the on the economy and on both households and businesses have been cutting spending in real terms

For three quarters in a row. This doesn’t point to a positive growth cycle that the Bank of Japan is looking for as it prepares the ground for raising interest rates for the first time since 2007. So this is a bad result for policymakers.

This really is the perfect headache for the Bank of Japan. Can we still assume, to your point, Paul, that they it’s still all systems go in terms of I think there’s a you hit the nail on the head there. There’s a nuance that’s that’s important to mark between

Normalizing policy and actually tightening policy. Yeah, sure. And I think if you if you look at the remarks from Bank of Japan board members and from the top brass, including the governor and his deputy, Chita, you’ll you’ll have heard that they’re talking

About scrapping the negative interest rate in terms of, hey, don’t worry, it’s not going to be that bad and it’s still going to be very supportive of the economy, very accommodative, which suggesting that it’s still a kind of form of easing. We still we’re still helping the

Economy. I mean, in real terms, interest rates are still negative. That’s the kind of thing the messaging that they’ve been giving. And I think they’re going to have to ramp up that talk if they can, if they want to go ahead with this rate hike in

In March or April. Yeah, there really different ways to spin this. Paul, Paul, thank you so much. Paul Jackson there in Japan for us on Japan, economy and government editor there, Justin Mark as well. Tara Kimura, our senior economist for Bloomberg Economics, also think the GDP surprise recession will give the BOJ a

Pause for now. That reaction on your Bloomberg terminals for you also on your terminals you probably saw this. So after being shut for the better part of the last two weeks or so, this market last traded. Just keep this in mind we’re talking about Taiwan here last traded ten days ago.

So you take take the move. You split that over the days it was shot. We’re up 3% on the Taiex index. We’re up 9% last I checked, 8% on TSMC. All of that being said as well, at 18 six, that’s an intraday that’s an intraday high, record high as far as

This goes. We’ll see where we end that at 18,615 on the RTX index. All right. It seems that this rally is moving quite a bit. You guys see that rally overnight. Things are going going vertical there. Okay. Let’s bring in Thomas Polak, head of

APAC, Multiasset Solutions at Zero Price, joining us out of hot and humid Singapore this morning. Thomas good morning and thanks for coming in to show that’s how I was wondering if I could start off with the your thoughts on where this bull market in the US equity market is at the moment

And your assessment there and just some of the names across the air space are just going vertical. What’s your sense of where we are in that story? Yeah. Hi, David. Thanks for having me. So just on the on the market reaction, we have seen still a sensitivity to

Macroeconomic data like inflation, but the rebound yesterday shows that the earnings power is stronger and especially as you are as you highlighted to the Magnificent Seven, maybe without Tesla generated a lot of surprise in their earnings and positive surprise. So we can see that continuing and we are

Still cautiously optimistic about the sector in the future. Right. And you mentioned inflation. And, you know, recent inflation data has been, I mean, noisy, very hot. In the U.S. We had the print out of the U.K. yesterday, very cold following very hot numbers the previous month there.

How do you suppose investors should be looking at this, that this series of inflation reports coming through, or should we look through the noise or is there something material there that might indicate a shift in the narrative? Yeah. For us it has been always on trying to

Build a portfolio that is diversified and robust enough to not only navigate that recession or the risk last year and now more of an upgrading in growth outlook, but now also inflation risk. We have always been telling our clients that it’s very rare for inflation to only come with one wave.

Typically you have multiple waves of inflation and what we have seen in our data is that last year we could see inflation rebounding. So that was an early sign for us to look at inflation sensitive assets like real assets or even inflation in bonds with a short term maturity.

You in fact, you have added to us tips. Tell us about that. When did you guys build those positions? We added that at the very end of 2023, as we were seeing some of our early indicator of inflation moving higher.

And again, we don’t necessarily want to add to to duration risk, but we thought that the shutdown tips at that time were fairly priced because a lot of people were looking at the disinflationary environment and the immaculate soft landing. So I think it will be a bit bumpier.

But definitely having a robust portfolios that will have some inflation protection also would be good to have. And given the fact that it seems for now, based on the data we have, a soft landing is on the way. You know, markets have closed the gap on expectations and rate hikes.

We’ve gone from 6 to 7 to close to three, where the Fed has guided these markets as well. What does it mean for a duration strategy? Do Are you short duration? Do you is it time to move away from that to your thoughts on that?

So as a macro investors, we are not too tactical on on our duration call we let our fixed income exposed to to do that on a more timely manner. But definitely we still have a negative duration position relative to our benchmark. So we will be short government bonds on

Investment grade. And at the opposite, we are quite overweight in high yield or even in emerging market debt, where we see the carry bit being beneficial. We see also in the emerging markets really inflation going down in a more stable way and allowing central banks to

Already cut interest rates. So that should benefit more the sector. So in fixed income is more higher, yields fall now to enjoy the carry and reduce the duration for a sovereign developed bonds and that goes into your overweight in Asia credit.

And I got to say though, those those spreads Thomas, look extremely tight already. Just give us your thoughts there. Yeah, it’s a it’s a good, good comment. I know a lot of our investors are asking the same question, but to me, it’s a it’s an environment where you want to be

Exposed to risk, but control your downside. And as I said before, there are some reasons to see yields moving lower, especially in Asia, and that should benefit the total yield of these instruments better. So I’m not too concerned about leverage or risk outside the Chinese property sector.

And in that case, Asia credit is quite well diversified and with robust fundamentals that should pay well into a normal carry environment. And Thomas, we just talked about Japan and the recession that it unexpectedly entered before we brought you in. I know you guys have reduced your overweight in Japan. Tell us why.

Yep. So it was a bit of a profit taking. We are still constructive on Japan. Japan is quite of a unique place where you have, as your poll just said before, and still an accommodative monetary stance. You have a reflationary that is having

An immediate impact, as we have seen in reduce consumption for the GDP print. But it’s an economy that is healing towards a more positive inflation environment. And last but not least, you have as a corporate governance that is definitely pushing better return on equity for

Shareholders. So coupled to that, you have also some flows coming from outside Japan, especially coming from China, as that has been supporting the markets in January. So that for us that was a time to reflect on that overweight position that

We have had for more than a year and to start to reduce that overweight. But we could go back, especially in an environment of a weaker yen that could continue to support the market going forward. In the meantime, you’ve taken that overweight. What are you funding with that reduction?

Where are you taking that? So what we have been upgraded recently is that, as I mentioned before, we have clearer indicators that the GDP, GDP is accelerating, especially in the US and does activity in some part of Europe. So with that, we think that cyclical stocks could do better.

So value, which was an area where we were on neutral or slightly underweight, we added to the value sector. But also in Asia we found that Korea, for example, Korea is exposed to AI, Korea is also exposed to cyclical upgrade. And you also have the removal of

Copyright governance improvement in Korea that is following Japan. So we want to observe remain in that time. So as that was also an area where we added position. Thomas outside of bitcoin. I think we covered the world there. Thank you so much. Thomas Hello there.

Thank you for joining us today out of singapore. Head of multiasset solutions, apac at t rowe price. Right. Coming up, we’re live out of jakarta, indonesia capital there we go on live pictures coming through after defense minister Prabowo Subianto declares victory.

And presidential elections also counting down to the open of trade under 15 minutes away and perhaps a rally in the offing. Question Mark. Futures are pointing down, though, the opening bell. That’s next. This is Bloomberg Markets China open. I. All right welcome back to shows ETF

Tracking. Indonesia in this case is the iShares MSCI. One overnight. Two and a half percent arguably first reaction to elections in Indonesia. The cash market, of course, reopens in about 40 minutes from now. In fact, let’s get straight to Jakarta, our chief international correspondent

For South East Asia, Linda Almond, is there for us to talk us through What a week it’s been has. Well, what a day it was yesterday. I mean, when it comes to that quick count, it does show that it has about 60% of the votes. And this is pretty stunning.

What a turnaround for the man who tried to be the president two times before and failed. But here he is with a majority of the vote. It talks to how successful his media strategy has been, in particular, tick tock, where he has managed to remake

Himself from a general who was linked to the killings in Papua New Guinea as well as East Timor. The abductions of student protesters to someone seen as a cuddly grandfather. Take a look at his meme on Tick Tock. It is this chubby, cuddly grandfather and that’s won the hearts and minds of

The younger population. 50% of the voters are under 40 years old, with no memory of what he did or allegedly did. So he has won that part of the vote. It also shows how Jokowi has played a massive role. Now, this is a president who, in his

Final year still maintains a high rating in excess of 80%. And some say that that has translated to more than 20% of Prabowo’s own votes. So it’s all worked for Prabowo. Now, in terms of his victory speech last night, he gave thanks to a slew of people, leaders of old leaders who are

Currently in place. But he generated the biggest reaction when he thanked Joko Widodo for his role for the win. Okay. Well, all all that considered the topics through some of the conversations you’ve had so far and the ones coming up to

Help us unpack really the you know, what this means for global markets and why should we care? And if you take a look at the reaction from the rupiah just yesterday, it strengthened half a percent. It talks about policy continuity, and that’s exactly what commentators have

Been saying as well. It shows that Prabowo will continue the policies of Joko Widodo. That means down streaming, that means infrastructure building. That means moving the capital from Jakarta to Centara. All good for the economy. But the challenge really is, you know, ramping up all the changes and the

Reforms. One thing to note as well, you know, it’s been very peaceful. There has been no reports of any violence, any incidents. And we’ve had the two contenders unease as well as gun gel. And while they have not conceded, they have also asked supporters to remain calm.

And I think that is the difference when you take a look and compare it to pause in elections where, you know, that was all is that that tension after the election. But take a look around. Take a look at the roundabout just behind me.

It is business as usual. And that bodes well for the country days. Has great stuff. Haslinda Amin there in Jakarta for us, our chief international correspondent for South-East Asia. Now, speaking of elections here, our live question of the day. We’re posing, of course, to all of you

Guys and do share your thoughts with us. Well, do elections represent risk? Or are they an opportunity? I guess the Chinese word is effectively both really from crisis and opportunity. But in any case, of course, do email in about well, for our clients. You can check that out, of course.

And you know how to reach us. And of course, for everyone else, markets live. One word at Bloomberg dot net. Right. Some other stories we’re tracking from around the world at this point in time. Police in India fired tear gas at

Punjab, Haryana, at the Haryana border here as thousands of farmers tried to march in the capital, New Delhi, to protest against cost pressures. And organisers says around 25,000 tractors have been gathered and more are expected to arrive. The farmers are demanding guaranteed

Crop prices and debt relief. The protest is a political headache for the Prime Minister Narendra modi. That’s ahead of elections in a couple of weeks. Now Israel has pulled out of talks on securing a ceasefire, with Hamas refusing to send a delegation back to Cairo for further discussions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again

Dismissed the militant group’s demands as delusional. Israel’s position suggests that even a temporary ceasefire remains far off. As fears grow about more than 1 million Palestine Palestinian refugees sheltering in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Meanwhile, tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have intensified after Israeli towns and an army base came under attack.

The barrage of missiles are blamed on Hezbollah Fighters based in Lebanon prompted Israel fighter jets to launch extensive strikes on Iran backed groups positions and some Israeli politicians, including cabinet members, have been calling for more aggressive action against Hezbollah. Right. Just under 7 minutes to the opening bell

Here in Hong Kong. And that’s the setup as we approach the opening bell 7 minutes away. This is Bloomberg. Welcome back. Now, before we get to a preview of the day ahead here, just to note here, one stop in Tokyo, rockets sent up daily limit, 16, 16% there.

This is an earnings story. Will unpack this even further bit later on. But suffice to say, this really has been the driving force across these different parts of this Japanese equity market, which are and we’ll talk more about some of these other stocks moving.

But there you go. Ten, 16% to the upside, right. May be going the opposite way and perhaps going the opposite way. There we go. We are on track for a weaker open this Thursday morning. And keep in mind, as we flip the page here, we did close higher for the day yesterday.

Quite a reversal. In fact, we open lower, we’ve reversed everything and then closed higher. So over the last two days or so, we’re still higher, though, from that reopened. In terms of the agenda today, it’s still fairly quiet. No stock connect, no mainland China, no onshore equities, no no renminbi fix.

Perhaps a pullback on the I vol gauge, which actually spiked three percentage points yesterday. So in terms of the upside here, 50 day moving average just may test that as well and ping I we’ll talk more about that that cut coming out of CLSA. Plenty more ahead. This is Bloomberg.

All right, So I’m losing track. It is. What is it? But Thursday. Thursday. Okay. Sorry. Okay. Okay. You know it. I we’re returning from work midweek. That’s what it does. You look at the week and you’re your brains and Monday.

And this is what that happens anyway. Okay, so I guess I’m still in vacation mode, so 25 seconds to the opening bell. Okay, I’m losing track of thought here. The last headline I wrote and here’s why. So we were looking at some breaking numbers coming to right. Singapore GDP, Miss Japan falling into

Recession unexpectedly and that jobs report out of Australia, 481 jobs. I was talking about this so my brain is still in vacation mode. There are more people on my flight coming back to Hong Kong than the Australian economy created jobs. I’m of course exaggerating, but yeah. 481 not a Labor less.

There we go. But we’re looking at a pullback across these markets and we’ll talk more about certainly the recovery because this is how we started yesterday, This is not how we ended the day across these markets. MSCI China five to well, a 10th of 1% to the downside right now a currency markets.

We don’t have onshore China yet. In China, we’re still hovering. I think it’s still okay. Let me just check that as we flip the page. We’re still hovering above this this key moving average, which we breached to the upside. And we’re just sort of settling above that level right now.

It’s the 100 day at 722, 1861. As you can see on China, this vol index is pulling back a little bit. We were up three points yesterday and it may be good news for some some borrowers out there. We’re at four and a half percent. Your high bar is relatively at, what,

Five month lows, but still substantially higher than maybe when you first took out that mortgage. Anyway, May one was a big mover yesterday on spending data coming through during the Lunar New Year. May one is still up today. Xpeng was substantially up yesterday,

Pulling back ever so slightly. So we’re looking at some of these big tech stocks, Alibaba JD dot com 30 net filings out overnight yet backward looking but it does indicate of course intention and ping on insurance CLSA taking a cleaver out cutting to stock to reduce price target 31 bucks that’s

About to 30 so that’s about an eight 8% downside give or take. I’m just doing the math in my head right now. Okay. Let’s talk about markets as we get underway today, what it means for the short term outlook. Jim, Joining us here on set is our stocks reporter for the Asia Pacific,

Ginny Yu. So yesterday was curious because we were we were looking at losses and then I went away to lunch. I came back and we were higher at the end. What happened? Yeah, I should I was a little bit surprised as well. I guess on the one hand the market was

Really there waiting for the China Asia Open next week. So on the one hand there is still some policy hopes in the market and then on the other hand I think is some of the people who were on the word China so much there.

We’re looking for some early indicators in terms of spending during the vacation, whether there is some early signs that, you know, things are stabilizing a bit and things are looking out from here. So we were seeing, for example, like Macau casinos, the number of visitors.

They were up like more than 30%. And also we were seeing some news about the traffic in China, you know, how it has recovered to the pre-COVID levels. So all of this are pointing to signs that, you know, there are some there are some areas in the economy that’s showing some signs of

Bottoming out. So I guess that’s bringing that investors some relief. Remember, the market is already down 60% from their highs, so it’s pretty cheap. So any positive news can lead to a very strong rebound from this very depressed valuation at this moment. Has it changed the overall view, though,

That has it removed this risk premium that this know just calcified around this market? Yeah, when we talk to investors, I think especially those long only investors, yeah, they’re still very cautious and they’re not really, really looking to get back to the market anytime soon

Though like although like they’re having a lot of difficulty to find enough investment opportunities elsewhere or to fill the their on the way positions in China. But still like I think they’re still in a wait and see moment and then like let’s see how China a react next

Week and how those measures we were expecting before the lunar new Year holiday how that’s going to be unfolded, you know, after after the long holiday. Jeanie, thank you so much. And as we were just talking there, surprise, surprise, the Hang Seng index is now up for the day.

Well, we’re about 4 minutes in, so let’s let’s give it a some time there We go to the point that Jeanie was just making the right some of the. Early data suggests that there has been a pickup in spending and travel activity during the holiday period. Let’s bring in Jean Leo, Creative China

Chief economist at HSBC Global Research. Good morning and nice to see you and happy New Year. Happy New Year. So let’s talk about that. What have you seen any strong data that suggests that there had been a pick up? There has. There has been. Sorry.

Present tense and pick up in spending, travel, what have you. Yes, indeed. I think the passenger trips this year will probably hit a record high. Now, the official estimates seem to point to 9 billion passenger trips this year and also in terms of the box office

Revenue. Just four days of the holiday already see 5 billion renminbi. That’s quite strong. So the even create a new phrase to describe the crowd. What’s the phrase? It’s long term. Okay. One nation, two persons, three persons. Just just drive everywhere. You see people. Okay. Yeah, that that’s certainly the case as

Well at the airport here coming back as well and around the streets of Hong Kong. Now, okay, so this is it’s a holiday period. How can we read anything from this that might indicate sort of a longer term sustainable path for the consumer?

Yeah, I think there is some peculiarity about this spring festival. This is the first a fully normalized spring festival since 2019. So a lot of pent up demand here. But at the same time, we also see some new spending pattern. Normally, people go back home for the

Spring festival, but this year, because we have eight days holiday in China, people go home and then start traveling. So in some countries we have the visa free entry for China, such as Malaysia, US, you know, Thailand, Thailand and Singapore. They all see influx of Chinese visitors

And within China everywhere people seem to travel a lot. Okay, let’s let’s talk about some of the data that’s come through so far. So think PMI numbers for January, the credit numbers exploded for January. Is there anything that we should take away from that from those numbers?

I think the January credit number is very interesting, not just because it beats the market consensus, but also in terms of the structure. We see that it’s no longer purely driven by the government bond issuance. We see the pickup on both the household credit demand as well as the the

Culprit. I think the starting from the late last year, there’s definitely a step up on the policy support. We see that probably play a role in this strong credit data. And you know, they’ve delivered a an earlier than expected triple R cut.

Do you see more from from the PBOC as far as monetary policy? They will talk about fiscal policy later on. Right. So we actually see in the second half of this year a 20 basis point of the rate cut from the MLF rate.

But the MPR rate cut could come earlier than that because the governor PEN already gave us a heads up at the same meeting when he announced the tomorrow. And on top of that, we also see this a sell 500 billion already on net

Injection that could continue to come to support the so-called the three projects in order to stabilize the housing market. Okay. Well, so that takes us into fiscal fiscal policy and things like bond issuance, for example, The NPC is coming up and the crucial number there is the, well, the budget deficit target.

So what are your expectations there and should we should we get excited? Well, I think actually we prefer to look at this broadly defined deficit, which actually come by both the general budget account and also another county government managed fund. This is where the issuance of special

Bonds, as well as the sales coming to. So combined together, we think the deficit would be 8% of the GDP comparable to last year and last year was the second highest, just so trailing the 2020 saw deficit number. So I think the fiscal policy will continue to be proactive.

And this year probably we’ll see more spending by central government in particular. So 8% total deficit if include everything else. So central government plus special. You talked about the reduction in interest rates even further. Will those those two things be enough to get us to get inflation going?

That’s the key question for markets, too. I think actually so far we see the drag as a major drag seem to come from the housing market. So it’s very encouraging to see the government start to step up the support on the housing market.

I think the new model to segregate the so called the commodity housing market, private housing, indeed, and then the social housing seemed to be a good model promising model in the sense that the social housing can also help to absorb the oversupply on the commodity housing market.

So for our viewers that are just hearing about that, that’s interesting. If you could talk. So what is that program exactly? So they were talking about other three projects, you know, different names for the target is to increase the total number of the social housing supply.

Actually, as of now, probably less than 20% of the population living the social housing. So there’s a lot of room for improvement and that could include both a construction from scratch and also purchasing some of the oversupply from the commodity housing market and convert that into a social housing. Okay.

So best best case scenario for the housing market this year. So we actually see the stabilization in a sense that property investment probably will come flat this year. In the previous two years. We see the contraction. Very quickly. As a final question here. Do you think stabilizing the stock

Market should become an economic objective? Well, I think, you know, the recent policy changes seem to point to the importance on the stock market. And we see the change of the CSR term in many other initiatives. So I think this property or at least a

Rising the priority. Okay, Julio, thank you so much in you in Kuala Lumpur. Right. Greater China chief economist, HSBC Global Research. Thank you so much. A quick glance at MOVERS across these markets. AIPAC wide renaissance is a big one. Of course. They’re looking at one specific stock in

Australia, 28%. You see that on your screens. Quite a premium there. 9 billion Aussie, I believe, was the worth of that transaction. Their Rocket ten we talked about that limit up. That’s an earnings story and TSMC is coming back on line along with the entire Taiwanese stock market.

Last rated fab 510 days ago split the difference. You get a daily move there. Right. About 10 minutes into the session, we’re looking at Hong Kong. Flip the page, please, if we can hang seng index developers h a stack. And there we go. We’ve now flipped back underwater.

Plenty more ahead. This is bloomberg. Good morning. And. All right. 42 minutes into the year of the Dragon. Taiwanese stock market, 2.6% to the upside. 18,005 66 is a level that we’ve seen. Never. So if we remain at these levels, we will be closing at an all time high on the

Specific benchmark. Right. This might even go into this sort of broader theme that everyone is talking about on Wall Street and just this unstoppable, insane I mean, name your adjective rally that’s taking place across the US air frenzy, lifting tech stocks again. I mean, in with the scorching rally

There that’s boosted the market value to back above Alphabet. It crossed Amazon just this week as well as long is with us out of Singapore to help us unpack the story so it video has now overtaken some of those traditional tech darlings April. Absolutely, David.

I mean, as you say, you can choose your adjective blistering, scorching rally on Nvidia. This year alone. It’s risen almost 50%. There seems to be this insatiable appetite for the processes used in the data centers to power these complex calculations required for AI applications and NVIDIA.

Its performance overnight has helped it to a market cap of about 1.83 trillion, eclipsing alphabet just the day after it overtook Amazon in market cap. Flip the board. I want to show you how it’s faring globally at 1.83 trillion. It is sitting just behind Saudi Aramco

At $2 trillion. It’s really become this investor free favorite of the AI frenzy. And I guess it’s worth discussing why and what sets it apart, I suppose, is ability to demonstrate revenue growth amid the frenzy. And we recently also got a glimpse into

Its investor investment strategy. It’s disclosed its stakes in ARM, which not so long ago it was trying to acquire as well as Soundhound. This is a company that makes the AI audio recognition software, and this month alone, NVIDIA has had at least five brokers upgrade their price target

For the stock. So the earnings next week are going to be absolutely key to watch for where we go from here with Nvidia stock. Yeah, I mean this company better deliver something nothing short of outstanding hopefully April I mean this this boom and this rally has has made some of the

World’s richest even even wealthier I imagine. Absolutely. And among them, the co-founder of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, who’s had about $20 billion added to his wealth this year. But it’s not just him. His distant cousin, Lisa Su. Also a lot of wealth. Avnet, now a billionaire, and she’s, of course the CEO of AMD.

And on top of that, we also have the Super Micro Computers co-founder Charles Liang. His wealth has tripled this year. And indeed, if you look at the Bloomberg Billionaires index, almost all the wealth that has been added this year can be traced back in some way, shape or

Form to artificial intelligence. But worth noting here, if you take a look at super micro and how its stock has surged this year, by the way, coinciding with a lot of the social media chatter around the company, the relative strength index that shows us that it is well into overbought levels.

And of course, amid this frenzy, we can’t all be winners. So it’s worth talking about Michael Berry, the money manager that was made famous by the book The Big Short. He actually offloaded a stake and had to unwind this bet against some of these high flying chip companies via the Asia

Semiconductor ETF. And he actually scooped up stocks in health and tech companies and boosted his positions in Alibaba as well as JD.com. David Yep, that’s interesting, right? Those 13 filings, what happened after what those filings suggested they did as of the end of last year and maybe did they miss it? Did they?

Did they take the right call it not time this April Thank you so much, April Hong. They’re unpacking quite a complex story. Everyone is talking about this really super microcomputer blows everyone’s mind. Okay, well, everyone’s talking about this, right? So Michael Berry, 39 filings, top holding now is Alibaba. There we go.

All right. Some other stories that we’re tracking across the world right now. Uber jumping to more than 18 months after announcing it will buy back as much as $7 billion in shares here. Now, the move comes after the ride. Hailing Pioneer reported its first full

Year of operating profit and consistently positive free cash flow. The CFO says that a repurchase plan is a vote of confidence in Uber’s financial momentum. Now, Cisco has announced plans to cut thousands of jobs after a slowdown in corporate tech spending wiped out its sales growth. A restructuring plan will roughly affect

5% of the firm’s workforce, which would mean about 4000 jobs. Cisco’s third quarter profit forecast fell far short of Wall Street estimates, sending the stock, as you can see on your screens, lower and they trade north of 5%. Okay. Here is the here’s the other big story and an update here.

So what happened with Lyft? Right. My bad to the CEO, David Risher has taken the blame for a typo that unintentionally inflated the company’s earnings outlook and sent shares soaring. On Tuesday, the firm’s press release initially said its margin would expand by 500 basis points instead of 50 basis

Points. Richer told Bloomberg the Lyft team was taking the error seriously. Well, first of all, it’s on me. There are a lot of eyes on this press release, but at the end of the day, my bad, bad luck. I don’t want it to take anything away

From the butt kicking performance that the business did. Thanks to all of our employees and thanks to millions of drivers. I mean, look, we had our our financially strongest quarter we have ever had. And I’m super excited about it. There you go.

Left to you speaking with us earlier, a couple of hours back on Bloomberg Television. We’ll be back. Don’t go away. We’ll leave you with a look at markets here in Hong Kong. This is Bloomberg. Fred, some of the stocks we’re tracking here. So we talked about this a few minutes back.

So 13 filings out. Alibaba not a top holding of Michael Burry JD dot com also so effectively they’re then adding exposure to Chinese tech that Taiwan Semiconductor TSMC 700 bucks seven and a half percent if you’re surprised by that number. Keep in mind this market’s been shut for

Ten about ten days or so calendar days, and it’s resumed trade today. All that considered, of course, we’re at a record high on the index itself. The ticks index were lower and slightly weaker here on the developer’s index. Chinese alarm index down about 2%. Okay.

Other things we’re tracking today, you know, it’s been it’s been busy on the economic data front. You know, we woke up this morning to another inflation shocker, this time out of the U.K., which came out in the afternoon. So if you slept early, you would wake up

To that. We do sleep early here. I’m in bed by seven. So we woke up this morning on well, as far as cable is concerned, we’ve recovered back above this key moving average. We’re sitting just on top of that on your chart. A couple of other things.

Singapore, GDP out about 2 hours back, missing estimates there, although the forecast for the year, 1 to 3% remaining unchanged. It’s number two and number three comments coming out of the RBA earlier on talking about how policy outside monetary policy outside will affect what

They do inside and going into that that again, and just a caveat as well, the jobs report out of Australia is always very difficult to predict. There’s always a lot of variance, part full time participation rate, employment rate.

The number that caught my eye and you guys might have seen this do 481 jobs, not thousand, not 100, 481 jobs were created. Quite a mess there. We did see, of course, a weakness coming through in the Aussie dollar, maybe some repricing and some repositioning there

Around expectations of when the RBA might actually be able to move, which still remains. By the way, I should mention a second half story and of course the other one was Japan unexpectedly reporting a contraction last three months of 2023, which effectively means that Japan is in

A technical recession. Okay, all your eco numbers out right now. And just to mention in Southeast Asia, the Philippines rate decision meeting was yesterday. Decision is announced later today. And as far as Indonesia goes in Southeast Asia, our live coverage continues out of Indonesia and we’ll be

Speaking with a lot of guests coming through, including the campaign team of Mr. Prebble and the former Indonesian trade minister. All these, as you can see, coming up on your screens at this time in a couple of minutes as well. There. There we go.

So stay tuned for that. And of course, do stay tuned for the market reopen in Jakarta. A couple of minutes away from that, just over 5 minutes away. And if some of these moves in the ETF market are any indication, see a move up of two and a half percent overnight,

IShares MSCI, Indonesia, we could see a pop at the open in Jakarta today just over 5 minutes away. So we are continuing coverage of the elections plus of all the big macro stories and all the big micro and earnings stories coming out of Japan. There’s plenty more ahead.

Thanks for joining us this hour. This is Bloomberg. And.