<p>Good morning! A great day starts with making money.</p><h3>Tech stocks are down again! Nasdaq fell more than 2%, while Dow and small-cap stocks rose</h3><p>The market expects the Fed to announce on Wednesday that it will maintain its interest rate policy and may hint at a possible rate cut as early as September. Dragged down by weak performances in chip stocks and tech stocks, the S&amp;P 500 and Nasdaq closed lower, but the Dow and small-cap stocks saw slight gains.</p><p>Microsoft's second-quarter cloud revenue fell short of market expectations, with its stock price falling more than 8% after hours. Amazon, Datadog, and Snowflake also fell after hours. AMD's second-quarter AI revenue doubled, raising its full-year sales guidance for the MI300 accelerator, with after-hours gains expanding to 9%, leading NVIDIA to turn from a 3% decline after hours to a 5% increase.</p><p>Most of the &#34;Tech Seven Sisters&#34; fell. Tesla fell by 4.08%, NVIDIA by over 7.04%, and Apple stated that its AI model is trained on custom chips from Google. Serve Robotics fell by 22.64%, CrowdStrike by 9.7%. Beyond Inc. fell by 9.79%, Applied Digital by about 6.6%, and MSTR by about 4.8%.</p><p>PayPal rose by 8.59%, with second-quarter net revenue exceeding market estimates and an upward revision of profit forecasts for 2024. Pfizer rose by 2.18%, with second-quarter performance better than expected and an upward revision of full-year adjusted EPS estimates. Merck &amp; Co. fell by 9.8%, lowering its annual profit outlook. Novavax's stock price fell by 25.7%, with JPMorgan downgrading its rating from neutral to underweight with a target price of $8.</p><p>Chinese concept stocks generally fell. ZEEKR fell by 4.6%, Li Auto by 2.64%, Bilibili by 1.39%, Baidu by 1.94%, Alibaba by 0.79%, XPeng by 3.64%, and Pinduoduo by 3.47%.</p><h3>Pinduoduo responds to hundreds of merchants gathering at Temu headquarters: &#34;The platform will not profit from fines imposed on merchants for violations&#34;</h3><p>Videos of hundreds of Temu merchants going to the Temu Guangzhou headquarters for rights protection have recently surfaced. Merchants claimed that they were fined and had &#34;after-sales reserve funds&#34; deducted by the Temu platform due to after-sales issues, with no way to appeal. On the evening of July 30th, Pinduoduo responded, stating: &#34;The platform will not profit from fines imposed on merchants for violations, and if fined, it will be compensated to consumers.&#34; An insider at Pinduoduo revealed that only a dozen or so of the merchants involved in this so-called &#34;rights protection&#34; incident were causing trouble, mainly in the apparel category, and many others present were &#34;brought in by these merchants.&#34;</p><h3>AMD releases optimistic revenue guidance</h3><p>AMD's second-quarter AI revenue doubled year-on-year, with revenue, profit, and third-quarter revenue guidance all slightly exceeding market expectations. While profit is growing, gross margin continues to expand. Data center revenue doubled year-on-year and hit a new high for two consecutive quarters, with the MI300 AI accelerator's annual sales guidance being raised as scheduled, indicating continued growth in AI infrastructure spending. AMD expects third-quarter revenue to be around $6.7 billion, with analysts' average expectation at $6.62 billion.</p><h3>Microsoft Azure cloud growth slows down</h3><p>Microsoft's total revenue in the second quarter increased by 15% to $64.7 billion, with adjusted earnings per share of $2.95, both exceeding market expectations. Revenue from Azure cloud computing services grew by 29%, slightly slower than the 31% growth in the previous quarter, reaching $36.8 billion, slightly below the market expectation of $36.84 billion. Intelligent cloud business revenue was $28.5 billion, below the market expectation of $28.72 billion. Microsoft plummeted over 7% after hours.</p><h3>Microsoft: Customers may encounter timeout issues when connecting to Azure services</h3><h3>Intel plans to lay off thousands of employees</h3><p>Intel's layoff plan may be announced as early as this week. After announcing layoffs starting in October 2022, Intel plans to reduce its workforce by around 5% in 2023, reaching 124,800 employees by the end of the year. Intel is also cutting back on expenses in other areas. The company expects these cost reductions to save up to $10 billion by 2025.</p><h3>OpenAI launches voice assistant service, delayed due to security issues.</h3><h3>Meta reports &#34;major outage&#34; in Meta Management Center</h3><h3>Google: AI image editing feature now open to all advertisers globally</h3><p>More languages will be launched later this year. Google has partnered with AI startup Typeface.</p><h3>Black Sesame plans IPO in Hong Kong</h3><p>AI chip maker Black Sesame Intelligence International plans to issue 37 million shares at an offering price range of HK$28 to HK$30.3 per share. Excluding the over-allotment option, the company will raise no more than HK$1.12 billion. The company is expected to debut on August 8. CICC and Huatai International are the joint sponsors.</p><h3>NHK: Bank of Japan to discuss raising rates by 15 basis points</h3><p>Instead of the expected 10 basis points increase, this would raise the rate from 0.10% to 0.25%. Some board members believe that the risk of yen depreciation pushing up prices should be closely monitored. In addition, the Bank of Japan will decide on specific plans to reduce government bond purchases.</p><h3>According to The Block: Trump campaign team raised $21 million at the 2024 Bitcoin conference.</h3><h3>According to Politico: The United Auto Workers Union is expected to formally endorse Harris for president.</h3><h3>Central Political Bureau meeting of the Communist Party of China</h3><p>Steadfastly complete the annual economic and social development goals and tasks; promptly introduce a batch of reform measures that are ripe and achievable; macro policies should exert more force and be more powerful; increase residents' income through multiple channels, enhance the consumption capacity and willingness of low- and middle-income groups; strengthen industry self-discipline to prevent vicious competition; actively support the acquisition of existing commercial housing for affordable housing.</p><h3>Russia to launch cross-border encrypted cryptocurrency payment service by the end of the year</h3>

<p>AI disappoints, Microsoft's cloud revenue unexpectedly slows down in the second quarter and falls below market expectations, plummeting 8% after hours. AMD's AI revenue doubles year-on-year in the second quarter, raising the annual sales outlook for MI300 and increasing the data center GPU revenue guidance. Arista's second-quarter revenue and guidance exceed expectations with double-digit growth. OpenAI launches voice assistant service. Google AI opens image editing features. Hundreds of merchants gather at Temu headquarters, Pinduoduo responds: "The platform will not profit from merchants' fines for violations." HeiZhiMa Intelligent International goes public</p>

- Microsoft Azure cloud growth slows slightly below expectations, leading to over 7% post-market drop for Microsoft. Nvidia (NVDA.O) post-market gains expand to 5%, while AMD (AMD.O) rises by 7.6%. Black Sesame plans to raise up to 1.12 billion Hong Kong dollars in an IPO in Hong Kong, with a price range of 28-30.3 Hong Kong dollars per share, aiming to issue 37 million shares. The company, Black Sesame Intelligence International, is set to debut on August 8, with CICC and Huatai International as joint sponsors.
- The UAW is expected to formally endorse Harris for president, as per Politico. Russia plans to launch cross-border encrypted currency payment services by year-end. China's Communist Party Central Political Bureau remains steadfast in achieving annual economic and social development goals, emphasizing timely reforms, robust macro policies, income growth, industry self-regulation, and support for housing acquisitions for public welfare.

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Breakfast | Tech stocks plummet, NVIDIA drops more than 7%, Pinduoduo responds to hundreds of merchants gathering at Temu headquarters