Hong Kong's three major stock indices showed mixed performance at midday trading. As of the lunch break, the Hang Seng Index fell 0.23% to 24,859.45 points, while the Hang Seng Tech Index advanced 0.76%, and the Hang Seng China Enterprises Index slipped 0.15%.
On the market dashboard, internet stocks mostly trended upward, with NetEase surging over 3%, while TENCENT and Alibaba both gained more than 2%. In contrast, Lenovo declined by over 1%. Chip stocks led the gains, with Montage Technology jumping 7%. Lithium battery stocks weakened, as CATL dropped more than 3%. Gold-related shares struggled, with Tongguan Gold falling over 3%.
Chip stocks led sector gains as Montage Technology rose 7%. This follows the recent joint issuance of the "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Electronic Information Manufacturing Industry" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the National Development and Reform Commission. The plan emphasizes accelerating the development of advanced storage capabilities, promoting storage-driven computing and storage-replacing-computing strategies, and enhancing the technological level of distributed and hyper-converged storage systems. It also calls for perfecting tiered data storage architectures and storage protocols. Furthermore, the plan targets breakthroughs in technologies such as intelligent tiered storage, data sparsity optimization, and key-value caching, alongside the development of new storage products including high-bandwidth flash memory, high-bandwidth memory, ferroelectric memory, resistive memory, and magnetoelectric memory.
Lithium battery stocks weakened, with CATL falling over 3%. Recent confirmations from several leading battery manufacturers indicate that since the second half of this year, various regions have largely ceased accepting filings for new power battery and energy storage battery production capacity, with new capacity applications effectively suspended. According to industry statistics, planned capacity expansion for energy storage cells this year has already exceeded 800 GWh. By year-end, built capacity is expected to reach approximately 1.2 to 1.5 TWh, with total planned capacity nearing 2 TWh—far surpassing the real demand of the global market.
Gold stocks remained sluggish, as Tongguan Gold declined more than 3%. Geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East pushed oil prices higher, while the 10-year US Treasury yield briefly broke above 5% during trading. The US dollar index surged to around 99.5, causing spot gold to momentarily lose the $4,300 mark. Notably, last week's US August PPI and CPI data revealed that inflationary pressures remain elevated, with core CPI exceeding expectations. Market participants now price in approximately an 87% probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike by the Federal Reserve this week. All attention is currently focused on the upcoming September FOMC meeting.
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