On March 13, amid geopolitical tensions, the A-share and Hong Kong markets experienced a broad pullback. The Shanghai Composite Index dropped below the 4100-point mark, with most sectors declining and over 3,800 stocks falling.
Despite the volatility, Bank of Hangzhou reached a new high against the trend. As of today, the large-cap bank ETF (512800) has quietly recorded four consecutive days of gains. The recent steady climb in bank stocks reflects renewed market confidence in the sector under the current environment.
The "price increase" trend has rotated to the consumer staples sector, with food and beverage leading the gains. The food and beverage ETF (515710), which reflects the overall performance of the sector, saw its price rise over 1% intraday before closing up 0.71%. This movement may be catalyzed by expectations of price hikes for end-consumer goods due to rising raw material costs.
Previously popular concepts such as computing power chips, commercial aerospace, and non-ferrous metals continued to correct. The ChiNext AI ETF (159363) closed down 1.84%, marking its third consecutive daily decline, while attracting inflows of 52 million units.
Huaxi Securities suggests that the structural theme of the A-share market by 2026 may gradually shift from technology to the "price increase chain." Three key areas are worth watching: first, input-driven inflationary pressures represented by the energy chain; second, endogenous inflationary pressures, such as traditional industries like chemicals and hog farming driven by "anti-involution" trends; and third, price increases in the tech sector, including upstream segments of the AI computing power industry chain like computing infrastructure and optical communication.
Notably, amid the overall decline in Hong Kong stocks, leading internet companies showed resilience.
The food and beverage sector rose against the market trend today. The HuaBao Food and Beverage ETF (515710) quickly climbed after opening and remained in positive territory, with its intraday price rising as much as 1.07%. It closed up 0.71%.
Among its components, Adisseo surged over 6%, Chongqing Brewery gained over 3%, Luzhou Laojiao and Haitian Flavouring rose over 2%, while leading baijiu producers like Kweichow Moutai, Shanxi Xinghua Cun Fenjiu, Wuliangye, and Yanghe Brewery all closed higher.
In terms of news, the national baijiu price index saw a slight increase in early March. Data shows the index rose 0.03% to 100.03. On a fixed-base basis, the national baijiu wholesale price index reached 106.19, up 6.19%.
Some institutions note that the baijiu market typically enters a calmer period after peak seasons like the Spring Festival. Such seasonal volatility does not affect the long-term positive trend of the baijiu industry, especially for high-end brands, whose brand strength and market demand remain solid.
From a valuation perspective, the food and beverage sector remains at a low level. As of the close on March 12, the PE ratio of the Sub-index Segmented Food Index, tracked by the HuaBao Food and Beverage ETF (515710), was 19.37 times, sitting at the 1.76th percentile over the past decade, highlighting its medium-to-long-term investment appeal.
Looking ahead, Huilong Securities states that the consumer sector's valuations are at historically low levels, already reflecting subdued market expectations. With the implementation of more pro-consumption policies, the sector is poised for a valuation recovery.
The Hong Kong market declined again, but the internet sector remained active.
Regarding the Hong Kong market's performance, the geopolitical situation suggests it may not resolve quickly, meaning Hong Kong stocks could continue facing external uncertainties. For the tech segment, after significant previous corrections and the rapid development of AI Agents, leading Hong Kong internet companies may benefit from both low valuation recovery and industrial transformation dividends.
In industry news, Tencent Cloud recently announced significant price hikes for its Hunyuan series large model APIs, with increases of up to 463%. The explosion of the OpenClaw agent ecosystem has driven rapid growth in large model token usage, directly benefiting large model providers.
Guotou Securities points out that since late January, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud have successively launched OpenClaw cloud deployment solutions, offering full capabilities including models, computing power, and interactive frontends. Agent product iterations are bringing significant business opportunities to large model and cloud service providers.
Looking forward, the latest earnings reports from internet leaders like
The IDC computing power leasing concept led the decline in the AI sector. The ChiNext AI segment remained weak, recording its third consecutive daily decline. Hand Information fell over 10%, while Aofei Data, Capital Online, Orient National, and Glorious Sun Network dropped over 7%. However, CPO leader New Easun rose against the trend, gaining 4%, and Zhongji Innolight advanced over 1%.
The popular ChiNext AI ETF (159363), which heavily invests in optical module leaders, closed down 1.84% for its third straight negative day, with trading volume shrinking to 462 million yuan, while attracting inflows of 52 million units.
In company news, optical module leader New Easun announced two significant developments: it launched the industry's first fully functional 448G DSP optical module with Broadcom, and introduced the industry's first 12.8T XPO module, a next-generation pluggable optical module designed for AI data center architectures, covering scale-up, scale-out, and metro interconnect applications.
Guosheng Securities notes that Broadcom, leveraging its strengths in networking, is becoming an XPU partner for many supercomputing customers. In the era of CSP-led capital expenditure, open decoupled architectures represented by ASIC/XPU and Ethernet will continue to thrive amid exploding AI inference demand. The open CSP camp will engage in long-term competition with Nvidia, while network equipment providers like New Easun will benefit from growing interconnection demands from both sides.
Looking ahead, the Nvidia GTC conference, often called the "AI Spring Festival Gala," begins on March 16. As a global bellwether for AI computing power, Jensen Huang's keynote will not only outline technological roadmaps but also serve as a catalyst for AI-related stocks. Past conferences have triggered structural opportunities, from the start of the AI era in 2023 to the successive booms in optical modules, liquid cooling, and CPO in 2024-2025. Which sectors might ignite this time?
Guosheng Securities expects the GTC conference to showcase core technologies of Nvidia's Rubin and Feynman architecture GPUs and highlight disruptive upgrades in computing infrastructure like CPO optical interconnects, 800V high-voltage power supply, and liquid cooling. As the conference approaches, the computing hardware sector has already begun warming up. Long-term, the industry's technological path and commercialization pace will become clearer, keeping focus on computing leaders like optical modules.
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