On April 17th, last week, two important economic figures in the United States, CPI and PPI, showed that inflation was continuing to cool down, which boosted market sentiment, and US stocks recorded cumulative gains throughout the week. However, Friday’s retail sales data fell more than expected, indicating that the momentum of US economic growth has weakened, and the market is evaluating the risk of recession trading. And the next earnings season will also bring more tests to investors.
Some analysts pointed out that the biggest factor affecting the US stock market in the coming week will be corporate earnings, which is particularly important considering the possibility of profit recession. However, judging from several banking stocks that took the lead last week, the performance has so far exceeded expectations.
In addition, the market is still concerned about whether the Federal Reserve will raise interest rates in May. Judging from the current market pricing, the final increase is a foregone conclusion. According to CME’s "Fed Watch", the probability of the Fed keeping interest rates unchanged in May is 21.5%, and the probability of raising interest rates by 25 basis points is 78.5%. The probability of maintaining interest rates at the current level by June is 15.8%, the probability of raising interest rates by 25 basis points is 63.4%, the probability of raising interest rates by 50 basis points is 20.8%, and the probability of lowering interest rates by 25 basis points is 0%.
However, it is worth noting that there are continuous differences within the Fed. The directors believe that the effect of controlling inflation is minimal and it is necessary to continue to raise interest rates, while the chairman of the Chicago Fed calls for not being too radical. This shows that after the aggressive interest rate hike, officials are also concerned about inflation and economic prospects in the United States.
In terms of weekend news, US President Biden said on Friday that he has decided to run for re-election and will officially announce his campaign "soon". This means that it is possible that Biden will face Trump again next year.
G7 emphasizes the commitment to accelerate the phase-out of unreduced fossil fuels, and to achieve net zero emissions in the energy system by 2050 at the latest. The seven countries agreed on a $4 billion action plan for key minerals (down from the planned $7.5 billion).
On the enterprise side, Musk established an artificial intelligence (AI) company named X.AI in Nevada, USA, aiming to compete with Open AI, the development company of ChatGPT. Under the wave of AI, the technology madman is naturally unwilling to lag behind. The front foot is still criticizing ChatGPT, and the back foot has purchased 10,000 GPUs.
According to informed sources, Musk is forming a team of AI researchers and engineers. He also discussed the issue of investing in this new company with some investors from Tesla and SpaceX. These investors are very excited about this. Earlier this year, in response to the rapid development of Open AI, Musk began to explore the idea of setting up a company to compete with it.
[Market Review]
Last week, the S&P 500 rose 0.79%, the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.29% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.2%.
[One-week preview]
[Weekend Highlights]
Biden: I have decided to run for re-election and will officially announce it "soon"
According to CCTV news, last Friday, local time, US President Biden said that he had decided to run for re-election in the 2024 US presidential election and would announce his campaign as soon as possible.
US President Joe Biden said on Friday that he has decided to run for re-election and will officially announce his campaign "soon". "We will announce it relatively quickly. This trip to Ireland has made me more optimistic about what I can do, "Biden told reporters at the end of his trip to Ireland. "As I said, my plan is to run again."
It is reported that Biden’s close assistants and allies have privately launched actions to establish relevant deployment and fundraising mechanisms for the 2024 election campaign.
Sword finger ChatGPT Musk set up an artificial intelligence company to compete with Open AI.
It is reported that Musk established an artificial intelligence (AI) company named X.AI in Nevada, USA, aiming to compete with Open AI, the development company of ChatGPT.
According to informed sources, Musk is forming a team of AI researchers and engineers. He also discussed the issue of investing in this new company with some investors from Tesla and SpaceX. These investors are very excited about this. Earlier this year, in response to the rapid development of Open AI, Musk began to explore the idea of setting up a company to compete with it. For this new project, Musk has obtained thousands of high-performance GPU processors from NVIDIA.
OpenAI CEO: the scale of large language model is close to the limit, not the bigger the better.
Sam Altman, co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, talked about the development trend and security issues of Large Language Model (LLM) at MIT’s "Imagination Action" activity.
He believes that OpenAI is approaching the limit of LLM scale. The larger the scale, the better the model may be, but it may be just to pursue a number. The scale of LLM is no longer an important indicator to measure the quality of the model, and there will be more ways to improve the ability and utility of the model in the future.
Retail sales in the United States slowed down more than expected in March, falling 1% from the previous month, and the year-on-year growth rate of retail sales hit a new low of nearly three years.
In March, retail sales in the United States decreased by 1% month-on-month, much worse than the expected growth rate of -0.4%, and the growth rate in February was revised from -0.4% to -0.2%. Retail sales only increased by 2.9% year-on-year, which is the lowest annual growth rate of retail sales since June 2020. Of the 13 categories, only 5 have increased. The "lag" of the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy, coupled with the impact of the banking crisis on spending, is beginning to emerge.
Differences within the Fed have intensified.
Federal Reserve Governor Waller said that recent data show that the Fed has not made much progress in the inflation target, and interest rates need to rise further. Bostic, president of the Atlanta Federal Reserve, said that after raising interest rates again, the Fed can suspend interest rate hikes and evaluate them.
US media: Apple will launch a number of new watchOS products in June or welcome major updates.
According to Interface News, on April 17th, reporter Mark Gurman wrote in his column PowerOn that the global developer conference that Apple will hold in June will be one of the most critical events in the company’s history-it will be an opportunity to herald the post-iPhone era and make its existing devices more attractive. Apple’s MR (Mixed Reality) head show will be the highlight of this conference, but other products will also be exhibited. It is reported that this includes the new Mac laptop and the biggest update to Apple Watch software since the first version was launched in 2015. Generally speaking, the company is planning to launch: Reality Head Show, Apple’s first major new product category in the past decade; New xrOS operating system and software development kit; New MacBook device; iOS17; iPadOS17; macOS14; watchOS10。 Among them, the updated versions of iOS and iPadOS are unlikely to provide major new features; The new Apple Watch operating system will bring greater improvements, including a new interface.
Musk: It is extremely difficult to achieve mass production and positive cash flow, and the car price is low enough to survive.
Musk wrote on Twitter on Thursday: "It is extremely difficult to achieve mass production and positive cash flow." The billionaire’s comments are a response to an old video shared by Twitter users. In that video, Musk said that in order to survive, the new company should be able to solve the problems of autonomous driving and electrification, and at the same time make a very "eye-catching" car and realize mass production, so that the cost of the car is low enough and the price does not exceed people’s affordability.
[financial calendar]