LazyCat

hmmm, a divergence formed for the 3 SG banks with UOB apparently whacked before their earnings call with concerns on their results. Would wonder if this is a set up to lower expectations? Conversely, DBS and OCBC have continued their run up; wonder if the expectations are set too high??

Stripe + Advent is taking advantage of PayPal's fallen market value to attempt an acquisition of a direct relationship with consumer which they current lacked (being in B2B). Doing this could boost profit margin as they could route transactions internally through strip and PayPal and bypass Visa and MasterCard, this saving fees.

The theme for "punishment" (aka excuse for profit taking) this year for the AI trade is consistent - concerns on ROI of capex. In this case TSMC is up nearly 40% YTD and institution players may simply used the capex headline as an excuse to lock in gains. Fact is that TSMC builds capacity against pre-paid customer (APPL, NVDA, AMD) commitments. With full-year revenue outlook raised from "above 30%" to 40%+ (abv Wall St consensus of 35%) and demand structurally locked in through 2030 due to emergence of agentic AI.

As the valuation of the AI hardware has been climbed to a level that sets unrealistic expectations, the market seems to de-risk and find excuse to take profit at every given opportunity. Such events releases some pressure and resets the valuations temporarily until the big one comes along.

IBM's software was hit as these were to be ran on their proprietary z17 mainframes (massive centralised supercomputer hardware). The capex for 3rd party servers (think Lego blocked CPU-GPU) engines is for AI workloads which is a different use case from z17. So it's not spending rotating from software to hardware per se, but to build a new gen of infrastructure for the age of AI.

Whether it's higher for longer or higher and higher, it's fine with my barbell portfolio. Rates up, my SG banks win; rates lowered, my Lion REITs will roar. There is no one single model portfolio, just one that suits your needs and allows you to snore through the night.

I believe the inflation print will be the key to set the market sentiments. Seems like the oil shock has been on and off for the past months and market is no longer that sensitive .

Many folks are starting to get concerned with the new ATH of the Singapore 3 big banks. While there may be some truth that wealth management may be the rocket booster that can offset a sputtering of the net interest income, we have to ask if the price has already priced them to perfection....

Banks are SG market's equivalent of "growth stock". Some have commented that their rally is like nvda. When the reduction in lot size kicks in, I would expect more liquidity to be injected when more retail punters are able to participate in the "bank run".

Chinese techs are severely beaten down since the end of last year and the valuation gap to their US peers are significantly wide. As a matter of opinion, I believe they are roped enough for institutions to take profits for the narrow US AI chips and semis trade and rotate here for a ride up. However, do take note that narratives would likely alternate between the markets to let the retail hold the bags while they switch their runways back and forth.