Breakfast | US inflation data is relatively mild, three major indices show mixed performance

Market Overview U.S. inflation data is relatively mild, and the IEA announced a record release of crude oil reserves, failing to boost market sentiment. Trump attempts to downplay the threats in the Strait of Hormuz, again suggesting that the war will soon end, while the market remains concerned about the situation in the Middle East. The S&P 500 fell 0.08%, the Dow Jones dropped 0.6%, and the Nasdaq rose slightly by 0.08% at the close. Large tech stocks outperformed the market, with Oracle surging over 9% after earnings, while cyclical stocks dragged down U.S. equities. U.S. Treasury yields rose across the board. Traders expect the Federal Reserve to cut rates only once this year. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose by 6.8 basis points, having increased by more than 30 basis points since the Iran conflict began. The dollar rose 0.44%, approaching 99, recovering losses from earlier in the week. The AUD/USD increased by 0.5%, reaching its highest level since June 2022. Spot gold fell 0.3%, while spot silver dropped over 3%. Crude oil prices showed a V-shaped recovery during the day. WTI crude futures expanded their intraday gains to 6.25%, hitting a daily high of $91.45 per barrel in early Asia trading. During the Asian session, the ChiNext index rose over 1%, the "lobster" sector declined, the photovoltaic industry chain surged, and "Ning Wang" AH shares soared, with Nio rising 13%. Key News China Ministry of National Defense: All parties should immediately cease military actions in the Middle East, and AI military applications should be human-led to prevent loss of control. Lao Pu Gold forecasts revenue to more than double by 2025, with net profit expected to exceed 4.8 billion yuan. Forbes Annual Billionaires List: Musk retains the title of the world's richest with $839 billion, while Zhang Yiming is the richest in China. Guotai Junan International: An employee has been detained by the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption. Overseas U.S. inflation continues to cool, with February CPI rising 2.4% year-on-year, and core CPI up 2.5% year-on-year, marking the smallest increase in nearly five years. Trump claims that military actions against Iran are "about to end," suggesting possible strikes on more targets, while Iran warns that the U.S. may fall into a prolonged war of attrition. The Iranian president proposed three necessary conditions to end the war, demanding compensation from the U.S. The IEA approved the release of record crude oil reserves, with 400 million barrels exceeding the 2022 level by more than double. In the past six days, Iran's oil exports have been higher than before the war. Reports indicate that the Trump administration will announce the initiation of a trade investigation to pave the way for new tariffs. The U.S. Department of Justice may see a turning point in the investigation of Powell, as the chief prosecutor has been replaced. NVIDIA is focusing on intelligent agents, with the open-source model Nemotron 3 boasting 120 billion parameters, increasing throughput fivefold. Jensen Huang made a rare statement: AI is a crucial force in reshaping the world, akin to electricity and the internet as foundational infrastructure "Giant Soft" challenges Microsoft: Elon Musk announces Tesla's joint project with xAI to simulate software companies using AI. OpenAI's e-commerce dream suffers a harsh reality blow: Purchase conversion rate below 1%, merchants watch coldly, users hardly buy. Meta expands its self-developed chip product line: Four new products to be launched by the end of 2027, strengthening computing power autonomy. Market Report US and European Stock Markets: S&P 500 down 0.08%, closing at 6775.80 points. Dow Jones down 0.61%, closing at 47417.27 points. Nasdaq up 0.08%, closing at 22716.135 points. European STOXX 600 index closed down 0.59%, at 602.54 points. A-shares: Shanghai Composite Index closed at 4133.43 points, up 0.25%. Shenzhen Component Index closed at 14465.41 points, up 0.78%. ChiNext Index closed at 3349.53 points, up 1.31%. Bond Market: US 10-year Treasury yield rose by 5.25 basis points, at 4.2082%. 2-year Treasury yield rose by 4.60 basis points, at 3.6360%. Commodities: Spot gold down 0.28%, at $5176.92 per ounce. Spot silver down 2.87%, at $85.7923 per ounce. WTI crude oil futures expanded gains to 6.25%, reaching a daily high of $91.45 per barrel in early Asia-Pacific trading. News Details Global Highlights China Ministry of Defense: All parties must immediately stop military actions in the Middle East, AI military applications should be human-led to prevent loss of control. On the afternoon of March 11, Colonel Jiang Bin, deputy director of the Ministry of Defense's News Bureau and spokesperson, stated: The US-Iran conflict seriously violates international law and basic principles of international relations, and continuing to escalate the conflict has no winners; military actions should be stopped immediately; AI military applications should be human-led to prevent loss of control; "Taiwan independence" separatist activities and political manipulation are destined to be futile. China's "lobster farming" is so sensational that the whole world is amazed, Goldman Sachs sales surprised: The speed and enthusiasm of the Chinese people! The open-source AI agent software OpenClaw has sparked a nationwide "lobster farming" craze in China. Philip Sun, Goldman Sachs Asia sales, said the speed and enthusiasm with which the Chinese embrace AI is astonishing. Nearly a thousand people lined up outside Tencent's headquarters in Shenzhen to set up machines, with participants ranging from programmers to retired engineers and housewives, related posts received over a thousand likes, and the comments section was filled with bewildered foreign netizens: This scale is insane! The first batch of victims of "raising lobsters" has appeared, with some spending money to uninstall. After the OpenClaw ("lobster") AI agent became popular, security issues emerged, such as random email deletions, privacy leaks, and API keys being stolen, raising user concerns and leading to a wave of uninstalls. The official has issued a risk warning, pointing out four types of serious risks, and experts advise users to use it cautiously and strengthen security protection in terms of version updates and permission control. Lao Pu Gold forecasts revenue to more than double in 2025, with net profit expected to exceed 4.8 billion yuan. Lao Pu Gold released a performance forecast, expecting revenue for the fiscal year 2025 to be approximately 27 billion to 28 billion yuan, an increase of about 217% to 229% compared to 2024; net profit is expected to be around 4.8 billion to 4.9 billion yuan, an increase of about 226% to 233% compared to 2024. In addition to the impact of gold prices, the announcement pointed out that three major factors—brand expansion, product iteration, and store expansion—are driving significant performance growth. Forbes Annual Billionaires List: Musk retains the title of the world's richest with $839 billion, Zhang Yiming is the richest in China.. The 40th Forbes Global Billionaires List has been released: 3,428 individuals made the list, setting a new historical high, with total wealth exceeding $20.1 trillion. Musk, with $839 billion, retains the top spot, becoming the first billionaire in history to surpass the $800 billion mark, and is expected to become the world's first trillionaire. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming, with a net worth of $69.3 billion, is the richest person in China, ranking 26th globally. The AI wave is contributing to this, with an average of more than one billionaire being born globally every day. Guotai Junan International: An employee has been detained by the Hong Kong Independent Commission Against Corruption. Guotai Junan International Holdings announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that on March 10, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) visited the company's main operating location in Hong Kong to execute a search warrant and took away some documents. The company has also been informed that one of its employees (not a board member) has been detained by the ICAC (for investigation). The company takes this matter very seriously and will continue to closely monitor the developments. Overseas U.S. inflation continues to cool, with February CPI rising 2.4% year-on-year, and core CPI rising 2.5% year-on-year, the smallest increase in nearly five years. U.S. core inflation slowed as expected in February; however, conflicts in the Middle East have led to rising oil prices, gasoline, and fertilizer costs. Citigroup believes that the upward pressure on inflation from energy prices is almost certain to be reflected in the March data. The market generally expects the Federal Reserve to maintain interest rates at next week's meeting. Trump claims military actions against Iran are "coming to an end," hints at striking more targets, Iran warns the U.S. may fall into a prolonged war of attrition. Trump stated he would "slightly" reduce strategic oil reserves to alleviate rising oil prices. Iran claimed to shift from "reciprocal retaliation" to "cascading strikes," and the U.S. Navy has "fled" the waters surrounding Iran; confirmed attacks on two vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, reiterating that the U.S. and its allies have no right to pass through. The UK stated that three ships were attacked in the Strait and nearby waters on Wednesday; Macron said coordinating escorts in the Strait would take weeks, and the G7 will organize the release of oil reserves in the coming days; Trump does not believe Iran is laying mines in the Strait, stating that the U.S. has nearly destroyed all of Iran's mine-laying vessels; the U.S. military threatened to attack Iranian civilian ports identified as military-use. The U.S. military's preliminary investigation concluded that it "accidentally struck" an Iranian school, and the White House stated it is still under investigation. Iran's president proposes three necessary conditions to end the war, demands compensation from the U.S.. Pezeshkian stated that the "only way" to end the current war is to recognize Iran's legitimate rights, pay war reparations, and provide firm guarantees from the international community to prevent future acts of aggression. Israeli Foreign Minister: Not seeking "endless war" with Iran, will negotiate end time with the U.S.. Israeli Foreign Minister Saar stated that Israel's goal is to "eliminate the existential threat posed by Iran to Israel in the long term," but it is difficult to achieve while the current Iranian regime exists. Israel believes that a regime change in Iran "may occur after military actions end," and the current military actions aim to create conditions for regime change. IEA approves release of record oil reserves, 400 million barrels, more than double the level of 2022. The U.S. will begin releasing 172 million barrels of oil next week. Germany will release nearly 20 million barrels of oil reserves. The UK will contribute 13.5 million barrels of crude oil**; French President Macron stated that the release will be arranged in the coming days. Japan plans to take action first next Monday. Japanese Prime Minister Kishi Nobuo announced thatas early as March 16, approximately 80 million barrels of strategic oil reserves will be released to hedge supply risks and stabilize oil prices. On the same day, President Trump stated that the U.S. government is working to maintain the flow of oil supplies. "The IEA's release of strategic oil reserves will significantly lower oil prices. Oil prices will (continue) to fall, but we will not leave (Iran) prematurely." Tracking traffic in the Strait of Hormuz on the tenth day: only 3 oil tankers passed, LNG ships have had zero passage for ten consecutive days According to the daily tracking report released by Morgan Stanley on March 10, only three oil and refined oil tankers passed through the Strait of Hormuz from the Persian Gulf that day, with zero LNG and LPG vessels transiting, while the normal level is about 35 vessels; there are no substantial signs of easing in the situation. Aramco stated that the flow of the east-west pipeline is expected to reach its maximum capacity "within a few days," which is expected to partially offset the export gap caused by the blockage of the strait. Blocked in Hormuz, Saudi Arabia and the UAE urgently reroute to the Red Sea, at least 25 tankers have changed course! Saudi Aramco's east-west pipeline is about to reach its daily maximum capacity of 7 million barrels, while UAE's Fujairah export volume has surged by 45% in a single month, with 25 tankers rerouting to the Red Sea's Yanbu port for redeployment. However, Iran's hardline stance and the continuous passage of response vessels, coupled with a global supply gap of 6%, mean that market tensions have not eased. In the past six days, Iran's oil exports have exceeded pre-war levels! Despite the blockage in the Strait of Hormuz, Iran's crude oil exports have shown contrary growth. According to Kpler data, Iran's average daily crude oil loading in the past six days reached 2.1 million barrels, higher than the pre-war level of 2 million barrels in February. Report: The Trump administration will announce the launch of a trade investigation to pave the way for new tariffs. It is reported that the trade investigation will be conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, covering issues such as digital services taxes and alleged currency manipulation. The U.S. Department of Justice's investigation into Powell may see a turning point, as the chief prosecutor has been replaced. The highest-ranking Republican on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee stated that the "chief prosecutor" responsible for the criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Powell has been replaced, which may indicate a significant development in this impactful investigation. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator from North Carolina and a member of the committee, has repeatedly stated that he will block any Federal Reserve personnel nominations as long as the Department of Justice's investigation into Powell is ongoing. NVIDIA is pushing for intelligent agents! The open-source model Nemotron 3 Super has 120 billion parameters, with throughput increased fivefold. The Nemotron 3 Super activates only 12 billion active parameters during inference, natively supporting a context window of 1 million tokens; the performance leap comes from three architectural innovations: a hybrid Mamba-Transformer backbone network, a latent mixture of experts (MoE) model, and multi-token prediction (MTP). This model runs on the Blackwell platform with NVFP4 precision, achieving inference speeds up to four times that of Hopper platform FP8, with no loss in accuracy Perplexity becomes the first partner to access the model for executing intelligent agent tasks. Jensen Huang Rarely Posts: AI is an important force reshaping the world, akin to electricity and the internet as infrastructure. Jensen Huang rarely writes personally, stating that AI is not just a model or application, but infrastructure similar to electricity and the internet. He proposed that the AI industry is a "five-layer cake" infrastructure—energy, chips, infrastructure, models, and applications—and judged that global AI infrastructure construction is still in its early stages, with current investments only in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and future investments needing to reach trillions of dollars. “Macrohard” Challenges Microsoft: Musk Announces Tesla's Joint Project with xAI to Simulate Software Companies Using AI. The Macrohard project, also known as Digital Optimus, aims to create an AI agent system that can directly operate computers and automatically execute other tasks. The system is divided into two parts: xAI's large model Grok acts as the brain, while Tesla-developed agents execute tasks. Last year, xAI submitted a trademark application for Macrohard. Reports this week indicated that Tesla has taken over a stalled AI agent project from xAI. OpenAI's E-commerce Dream Faces Harsh Reality: Purchase conversion rate below 1%, merchants watch coldly, users almost do not buy. Traffic is hard to convert into sales! Due to a product click-through rate of less than 1% and lukewarm merchant interest, OpenAI is scaling back its direct checkout business for ChatGPT, shifting focus to the "ChatGPT apps" model and advertising business. However, with payment not being closed-loop and giants like Shopify retreating, its path to commercialization remains long. Meta Expands Self-Developed Chip Product Line: Four New Products to Launch by the End of 2027, Strengthening Computing Power Autonomy. Meta is accelerating its self-developed chip layout, planning to launch four AI chips by the end of 2027, covering scenarios such as content recommendation and generative AI inference. The latest MTIA 300 has entered mass production, MTIA 400 is about to be deployed, and the other two are scheduled to launch in 2027. Meanwhile, Meta continues to sign procurement agreements worth hundreds of billions of dollars with NVIDIA and AMD, forming a dual-track computing power supply system of "self-developed + external procurement," maintaining supply chain flexibility while controlling costs. Research Report Highlights “Big Short” Predicts Major Recession for the U.S. Next Year. Wall Street "Big Short" David Rosenberg warns that the two engines supporting the U.S. economy—fiscal stimulus and AI capital expenditure—are about to stall simultaneously, and the U.S. may face a major recession Currently, the slowdown in the U.S. GDP and pressure on employment have revealed cracks in the economic fundamentals. If the stock market experiences a significant correction that weakens the wealth effect and suppresses consumer spending, it will become a direct trigger for a severe recession. In addition to releasing strategic oil reserves, the U.S. has "six major moves," but if the Strait of Hormuz is blocked, the "impact will be limited." The U.S.-Iran conflict has triggered oil prices, and the IEA plans to release the largest scale of strategic reserves in history, with G7 urgently consulting. However, JP Morgan bluntly stated that releasing reserves, restricting exports, and exempting fuel taxes are all "a drop in the bucket." The potential daily supply disruption in the Strait of Hormuz could reach 12 million barrels, far exceeding the coverage capacity of any policy. The real turning point for oil prices has only one condition: the U.S. Navy officially announces safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Alternative routes to the Strait of Hormuz: Amidst the turmoil in the Middle East, the global oil market relies on these two pipelines for "survival"! The Saudi East-West pipeline and the UAE's Habshan to Fujairah pipeline have a combined oil transport limit of about 8.8 million barrels per day (the previous oil transport scale through the Strait of Hormuz was about 20 million barrels per day), and they are the only two routes that can allow a large amount of crude oil to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Analysts warn to be cautious of potential strikes on oil pipelines and related ports, which may have a secondary impact on oil prices. Domestic Macro Ministry of Industry and Information Technology NVDB: "Six Musts and Six Must Nots" Recommendations for Preventing OpenClaw ("Lobster") Open Source Intelligent Agent Security Risks. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's cybersecurity threat and vulnerability information sharing platform has released security recommendations for the "Lobster" application scenario, proposing the "Six Musts and Six Must Nots" principles: use the official latest version, strictly control internet exposure, implement the principle of least privilege, use the skill market cautiously, prevent cyber attacks, and establish long-term protection; strictly prohibit the use of third-party images, exposed instances, excessive privilege deployment, use of high-risk skill packages, browsing unknown websites, and disabling log auditing. Domestic Companies/Industries China Association of Automobile Manufacturers: In February, the production and sales of new energy vehicles decreased by 21.8% and 14.2% year-on-year, respectively. Affected by the misalignment of the Spring Festival holiday and insufficient consumer willingness, the passenger car market and new energy vehicles in February saw a year-on-year decline, with new energy vehicle production and sales reaching 694,000 and 796,000 units, down 21.8% and 14.2% year-on-year, respectively. The sales of new energy vehicles accounted for 42.4% of the total sales of new cars. Overseas Macro U.S. Congressional Budget Office: Federal budget deficit of $1.9 trillion for fiscal year 2026. The Congressional Budget Office predicts that by 2036, the U.S. federal budget deficit will increase to $3.1 trillion, with the deficit-to-GDP ratio rising to 6.7%, higher than the average ratio of 3.8% over the past 50 years The increase in the deficit is mainly due to the rise in net interest costs. Despite the situation in the Middle East, confidence among CEOs of large American companies in the economy continues to grow, reaching a new high in over a year. Confidence among CEOs of large American companies remains strong in the first quarter. According to a survey released on Wednesday, the CEO Economic Outlook Index from the Business Roundtable rose by 9 points to 89, marking a new high in over a year. An index above 50 indicates expectations for growth in capital expenditures, sales, and hiring over the next six months. Hiring plans have improved, but about one-third of CEOs still indicate intentions to lay off employees in the coming months. ECB official: If the Middle East conflict drives up inflation, the central bank may raise interest rates earlier! Due to concerns that rising energy prices will lead to widespread inflation, officials led by the central bank governors of Slovakia and Germany have signaled a hawkish stance, significantly increasing market bets on interest rate hikes, while discussions about rate cuts have returned to the table. Despite internal divisions on the outlook, the ECB is cautious about the lessons learned from 2022's inflation, emphasizing decisive action to ensure price stability. US media reports: After the US granted India a temporary exemption to purchase Russian oil, Indian refiners have bought about 30 million barrels of Russian oil. According to Bloomberg, citing informed sources, since the US approved India's procurement of Russian oil last week, Indian refiners, including state-owned oil companies and Reliance Industries, have "scooped up all unsold Russian crude oil in the spot market." This batch of oil has been loaded onto ships but has not yet been delivered, with most of it located in Asian waters. Overseas Companies Oracle conference call: Signed a $29 billion deal, AI infrastructure "does not consume its own cash flow," "we are the disruptors of SaaS". Oracle's better-than-expected Q3 fiscal results alleviated two major market concerns: debt pressure and the "SaaS apocalypse." The company's AI infrastructure revenue surged by 243%, and by introducing customer prepayments and a "bring-your-own-hardware" model, it signed a new $29 billion contract, decoupling capital expenditures for AI infrastructure expansion from its own cash flow consumption, easing market concerns about its debt. Meanwhile, executives firmly rebutted claims that AI would eliminate traditional software, asserting that Oracle is the "disruptor." Oracle promotes "bring-your-own-chip" to the cloud, passing on high AI infrastructure costs. Facing the financial pressure from large capital expenditures, Oracle is requiring some cloud service customers to bear the expensive costs of procuring AI chips themselves or to directly bring their own chips to connect to its data centers. This move allows it to fulfill new orders while avoiding further deterioration of cash flow. Oracle's stock price surged 10% in pre-market trading, reflecting a reassessment of the management's capabilities by the market NVIDIA invests $2 billion in AI cloud company Nebius to co-build AI data centers. NVIDIA is ramping up its AI infrastructure by injecting $2 billion into Dutch cloud service provider Nebius to co-build AI data centers, planning to deploy over 5 gigawatts of computing power by the end of 2030. This move is the latest example of NVIDIA's "circular investment" strategy, continuously supporting chip buyers like CoreWeave and OpenAI to solidify its core position in the AI supply chain and respond to competitive pressures from cloud giants like Google and Amazon developing their own chips. As a result, Nebius's stock price surged nearly 15% in early trading. Meta acquires "Lobster Community" Moltbook, Zuckerberg aims to pave a path for Agents. Meta will integrate Moltbook into its Meta Super Intelligence Lab, with the co-founders joining the team. Meta values its "permanent directory" model, which provides a continuously online registration and invocation system for AI Agents to enhance their interconnectivity. Moltbook is a social network structured like Reddit, with its core functionality relying on the open-source project OpenClaw. Report: Apple's foldable iPhone to be released later this year, featuring an iPad-like interface when unfolded. According to media reports citing informed sources, this long-awaited foldable phone from Apple will feature an internally folding display roughly the size of an iPad mini. It will also include an external screen similar in size to that of a small iPhone. The internal screen will adopt a wider aspect ratio, differing from the generally narrower screen ratios of current foldable phones on the market. Informed sources indicate that this could become a key selling point. Wall Street giants take the lead: JP Morgan lowers collateral valuations for private credit, tightening lending leverage. JP Morgan has proactively lowered collateral valuations for loans to software companies, becoming the first major bank on Wall Street to tighten private credit leverage. Concerns about AI disrupting the software industry are spreading from the public market to the private sector, while other major banks have yet to follow suit, suggesting that a valuation reset storm may be quietly approaching. Today's News Preview U.S. initial jobless claims from last week. U.S. new housing starts and building permits for January. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to meet with Middle East envoy. Federal Reserve to release quarterly financial accounts report. Adobe, Futu, and Li Auto to announce earnings