HK, US stocks top stories

US TikTok revamp done: what did ByteDance lose vs. gain?

Amid repeated Congressional hearings and mounting legislative pressure, TikTok's U.S. biz has long been mired in 'national security' disputes. Citing cross-border user-data risks and control of its recommendation algorithm, lawmakers have repeatedly pushed ByteDance to divest TikTok's U.S. operations.On Dec 18, 2025, CEO Shou Zi Chew announced agreements with Oracle and Silver Lake, among other U.S. investors, to establish a dual-entity structure separating 'commercial operations' and 'data security', offering a provisional answer to a years-long standoff. What could this 'grand compromise' mean going forward?

GOOGL vs. NVDA: Is the comeback thesis credible?

Google’s full-stack AI strategy has been unfolding for over a month, and cracks in OpenAI’s circular financing narrative have prompted a seemingly sudden shift in the AI storyline. For Google, this is a build-and-breakthrough arc: incremental upgrades compounded into a step-change, and more importantly, its business positioning has fundamentally shifted. As Anthropic places another 11bn TPU order and Meta advances a collaboration with Google on foundational language models...

Zhang Bin from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences: In the short term, the most important thing for consumption growth is to enlarge the nominal GDP cake

Zhang Bin, deputy director of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the key to consumption growth in the short term is to expand nominal GDP. The growth of nominal GDP will promote residents' income, government tax revenue, and corporate profits, thereby naturally driving consumption growth. Zhang Bin suggests using counter-cyclical fiscal and monetary policies to raise the price level, aiming for a GDP deflator index of 2%, thus achieving nominal GDP growth

Dialogue with Pony AI's Wang Haojun: Robotaxi is entering the stage from 1 to 1000

Gradually profitable

Sell all Nvidia, mortgage Arm to leverage! SoftBank bets everything on OpenAI, striving to secure funding by the end of the year

According to reports, SoftBank is aggressively raising funds to fulfill its $30 billion investment commitment to OpenAI, aiming to complete the remaining $22.5 billion injection by the end of the year. Masayoshi Son has fully liquidated $5.8 billion worth of Nvidia shares, reduced his stake in T-Mobile by $4.8 billion, and plans to mortgage Arm shares to obtain a $11.5 billion margin loan

GAC "tightens its belt"

Fight for Revival

Prediction: This Is Where Palantir's Stock Will Finish by the End of 2026

Palantir Technologies has seen significant stock growth due to AI hype, but its high valuation makes it vulnerable. With a P/E over 400, it's considered speculative. Economic disconnect and potential Fed changes could impact high-priced stocks like Palantir. By 2026, the stock may fall below $100, possibly even $50, as market turmoil affects valuations.

Clocktower Chief Strategist Kevin Wang: The macro focus in 2026 is on inflation, beware of the risk of a shift in monetary policy expectations

Clocktower Chief Strategist Kevin Wang stated at the Alpha Summit that the global macro focus in 2026 is on inflation. Currently, U.S. inflation is above the policy target, and the market expects multiple rate cuts. He warned investors to prepare for the possibility that the Federal Reserve may cut rates fewer times than expected and emphasized that if inflation rises above 3.5%, the Federal Reserve may shift to raising rates

Clocktower Chief Strategist Kevin Wang: Global allocation imbalance is significant, and Chinese assets may become the biggest "short squeeze" opportunity in the next decade

Clocktower Chief Strategist Kevin Wang pointed out at the Alpha Summit that global capital allocation is severely unbalanced, with international institutional investors averaging less than 2% allocation to China, far below China's approximately 20% share of global GDP. He believes that this allocation gap, along with expectations of a long-term weakening of the dollar, could make Chinese assets one of the most promising "short squeeze" opportunities in the next decade

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: Inflation is moving towards the Federal Reserve's 2% target

Federal Reserve: U.S. bank deposits last week were $18.519 trillion, up from $18.484 trillion the previous week

The Nasdaq Golden Dragon China Index preliminarily rose by 0.9%, with a cumulative decline of about 1.3% this week. Pony.ai rose by 11.7%, XPeng rose by 6.7%, Zai Lab rose by 5.1%, Li Auto rose by 5%, and GDS rose by 4.3%. Beike fell by 1%, and Boss Zhipin fell by 2.6%

White House advisor Hassett: The U.S. government shutdown has slightly reduced the reliability of CPI data

Trump boasts of a "great victory": Nine major pharmaceutical companies reach a price reduction agreement in exchange for a three-year tariff exemption

After Merck, Novartis, GSK, and other nine pharmaceutical companies signed the agreement, Trump stated that 14 out of the 17 pharmaceutical companies targeted by the government this summer have agreed to "significantly" lower prices. The U.S. Secretary of Commerce hinted that the remaining three companies will announce similar agreements after the year-end holidays

The 10-year U.S. Treasury yield fell more than 3 basis points in the week when the U.S. CPI data was released

This Friday (December 19), at the New York close, the yield on the U.S. 10-year Treasury rose by 2.74 basis points to 4.1490%, but fell by 3.50% for the week. The yield on the 2-year Treasury rose by 2.34 basis points to 3.4834%, with a cumulative decline of 3.88 basis points for the week. The yield on the 30-year Treasury rose by 2.43 basis points to 4.8272%, with a cumulative decline of 1.73 basis points for the week. The yield spread between the 2-year and 10-year Treasuries increased by 0.401 basis points to +66.356 basis points, with a cumulative increase of 0.377 basis points for the week. The yield on the 10-year TIPS rose by 3.40 basis points to 1.8902%, with a cumulative increase of 0.45 basis points for the week

The Chairman of the U.S. Congress Financial Committee sent a letter to Federal Reserve Governor Bowman, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) regarding the capital system