Zhitong Hong Kong Stock Exchange Unravels | The hegemony of the US dollar shakes, gold continues to soar, and technological sentiment eases and recovers
[Anatomy Dashboard]
The three major US stock indices collectively fell as expected, because yesterday's talk of the Treasury Department's action did not solve the problem substantially. In contrast, there aren't that many domestic problems, and the rise in weighted stocks such as banks and insurance directly blocked shorting momentum. Instead, Hong Kong stocks rose 1.21% today.
America's biggest problem is debt, and its treasury bonds have broken the $40 trillion mark. Interest expenses soared to $1.37 trillion in a short month, and interest expenses for the fiscal year reached $1.37 trillion (up 20% year over year). The buy-back effect of the US Treasury Department continued for only one day. Bezent said that US bond repurchases could be increased, at one time, or over 4 billion dollars, but the market did not buy it, and the 30-year yield on US bonds returned to 5.26%. The new situation came again, and Bezent threatened to impose “unprecedented economic isolation” on Iran. On the other side, the UAE announced the suspension of all trade, commercial and financial dealings with Iran on the 19th after accusing Iran of firing two ballistic missiles at it. You need to know that about one-third of Iran's imports need to be transferred from Dubai, and the UAE is embargoed or even more so than the US maritime blockade. As a result, the main contract for the shipping index (European line) rose more than 10% on August 21, hitting a new high since June 3. COSCO Haineng (01138) rose more than 7%, Haifeng International (01308), COSCO Marine (01919), and Zhitong's August gold stocks Pacific Shipping (02343) rose more than 5%, and Dongfang Overseas International (00316) rose more than 4%. This section has been mentioned many times.
Jeff Currie, a former product director at Goldman Sachs, believes that if the US loses control of the Strait of Hormuz, it will completely break the bottom of the Bretton Woods system deal where “the US military protects global waterways in exchange for dollar hegemony”. This will not only end the “excessive privilege” of the US dollar, causing the US to face a serious economic crisis where financing costs (interest rates on treasury bonds) have risen sharply, but it will also directly shake its status as a superpower. If credit collapses, the dollar will be in trouble, and gold will increase its share. The spot gold price has already exceeded 4,500 US dollars/ounce. Chifeng Gold (06693) surged more than 12%, while Shandong Gold (01787) and Zhitong's August gold stocks Zijin Gold International (02259) rose more than 8%.
In this context, all resource stocks should start; see section focus for details. Other lithium resources are also strengthening. Recently, according to market media quoting people familiar with the matter, Ganfeng Lithium (01172) and LG Chemical are in in-depth discussions to acquire some of the shares in the Wodgina lithium mine owned by Mineral Resources (MinRes). On the demand side, the total production schedule for China's entire lithium battery market in August was about 304 GWh, up 7.4% month-on-month, exceeding the 3% to 5% range predicted at the beginning of the month, and set a new historical peak for the 6th month in a row. Among them, energy storage cells are scheduled to be produced at 125 GWh, a net increase of about 10 GWh over the previous year, an increase of nearly 200% over the previous year, accounting for 41.4%. Overseas large-scale storage projects have concentrated on stocking, driving energy storage to quickly become the number one growth engine for lithium demand. The recent rise in lithium prices is also impressive. The main contract for lithium carbonate surged nearly 4% this morning, reaching a maximum of 158,520 yuan/ton. Since August, lithium carbonate prices have increased by more than 15% cumulatively. Ganfeng Lithium (01772) and Tianqi Lithium (09696) rose more than 8% and nearly 12% respectively. Whether the rebound can continue requires verification of three indicators: whether inventories can continue to decline, whether spot prices can keep up with the rise in futures, and whether demand growth can absorb subsequent new and resumed production supply. If it's just that futures rise, spot stocks don't keep up, and inventories accumulate again, it's closer to a transactional rebound; if spot strengthens at the same time, continues to go out of stock, and downstream production schedules remain high, it means that fundamentals are undergoing more solid changes.
There has been some correction in the direction of technology and hardware. Following SK Hynix's announcement of a 40 trillion won share repurchase plan this Wednesday, Samsung has also begun to follow suit. According to media reports quoting people familiar with the matter, South Korean memory chip giant Samsung Electronics will announce a new shareholder return plan on Friday, which may be as large as 110 trillion won (79 billion US dollars). This is expected to be the largest shareholder return program in the history of Korean companies. CEO of Micron: Without storage, there is no AI. The current purchasing intention of data center customers is about 150% of the supply that Micron can actually promise, that is, demand exceeds supply by about 50%, and the company's production capacity is still unable to meet market demand. Hynix has released a roadmap for the next generation of CPO, which will extend to memory interfaces. Zhongji Xuchuang (03308), Bijiao Technology (06082), Tianshu Zhixin (09903), and Guanghe Technology (01989) all increased by more than 5%.
The AI application side is still stronger. Intelligent Spectrum (02513) officially launched the GLM-5.3 model API and scored 60 points in the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index. For the first time, it is on the same level as the closed-source flagship model. The agency estimates that OpenRouter's revenue share of the GLM model has risen from 1% in January to 7% in July, leading DeepSeek's 6% and Dark Side of the Moon's 3%. National Supercomputing Internet Online Smart Spectrum next-generation base model GLM-5.3 API call service. Zhi Spectrum (02513) rose more than 10%; Zhitong's August gold stock MINIMAX-W (00100): On August 20, MiniMax released MiniMax Design, a multi-modal creation agent workbench, which is a Harness that turns multi-modal model capabilities into real productivity. By the end of 2025, the MiniMax video model had generated more than 600 million videos, and this group of users also provided a transformation foundation for Design into professional subscriptions, team collaboration, and enterprise services. Today it surged nearly 12%.
Walmart released its latest quarterly report. Its “same-store sales” increased by only 2.6%, far below the market's forecast of 3.7% to 3.8%, and hit a 6-year low. Sales and profit guidance for the third quarter was weak. Net sales at fixed exchange rates increased by 3.0% to 3.75%, and adjusted operating profit increased by only 2% to 4%. The reason is that oil prices have risen sharply due to the US-Iran war, US inflation is running at a high level, ordinary Americans have more money to buy oil, their daily optional consumption has decreased, and stock prices have plummeted by more than 9%. How much does it affect consumer sentiment.
However, with regard to the timely issuance of domestic policies, Vice Minister of Finance Liao Min said that all types of new credit card instalment purchases, including car purchases and renovations, will be included in the scope of policy support. According to this, consumers can enjoy interest rate discounts as long as they use credit card installments to spend. The good performance was mainly in the gold jewelry category. For example, the old store Gold (06181) and Zhou Liufu (06168) all rose by more than 7%; JS Global Life (01691), which has other small household appliances, rose more than 7%. In terms of mobile phone consumption, Xiaomi (01810) and Shunyu Optics (02382) increased by more than 4%.
According to the official WeChat account of Jizhijia-W (02590), Gizhijia recently helped several factories under Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation complete large-scale deployment of Gizhijia robots. A total of 436 robots have been put into operation, of which the maximum deployment scale of a single system has been expanded to about 200. This not only indicates that Jizhijia's AI+ robot solution has penetrated deeply into the top supply chain of the global automotive industry, but also further consolidated its leading position in the field of high-barrier and high-standardization of intelligent automotive manufacturing. Today's increase is over 7%.
[Section Focus]
From energy to agricultural products, from precious metals to basic metals, the scope of recent price increases in the global commodity market has undoubtedly become increasingly obvious or even impossible to ignore. This is also driving various comprehensive commodity indices in the market to continue to rise. In response, Jeff Currie (Jeff Currie), a senior commodity strategist and known as the “Godfather of commodities,” was quite excited to post more than ten consecutive posts on social media X on Thursday, urging investors to turn more attention to the commodity market.
He pointed out that the shortage of the physical commodity market, the intersection of currency depreciation and policy intervention is a sign of a structural commodity bull market cycle. Currie was the former head of Goldman Sachs commodities division and is currently the co-chairman of Abaxx Markets. In a series of posts posted on the X platform, he wrote that as the bottlenecks in the global physical commodities market become increasingly apparent, and the intervention of the US Treasury bond market is further boosted, commodities will undoubtedly become the biggest winners.
Major varieties of Hong Kong stocks. Copper stocks: China Nonferrous Mining (01258), Minmetals (01208), Jiangxi Copper (00358), Zijin Mining (02899); aluminum stocks: China Hongqiao (01378), China Aluminum (02600), Nanshan Aluminum International (02610); tungsten stocks: Jiaxin International Resources (03858) will review the interim results on August 24.
[Individual Stock Mining]
China Software International (00354): The rapid growth of full-stack full-scenario AI will follow up and observe whether the token operation model is large-scale
The company announced interim results up to the end of June this year, showing revenue of 8.948 billion yuan (RMB, same below), up 5.2% year on year; profit attributable to shareholders of 350 million yuan, up 11% year on year; profit per share of 13.87 points, with no dividends.
Comment: The company's profit has improved markedly. The core driving force comes from the continued expansion of the full-stack full-scenario AI product and service business. This revenue of 1,532 billion yuan, +133.7% over the same period. It is the only high-growth sector, accounting for about 17.1% of total revenue. It continues to be the Group's core growth engine, showing strong development momentum.
The company is a direct beneficiary of Shengteng's localization wave and is deeply involved in the large-scale implementation of Hongmeng City. The company is making every effort to promote the development of allmeta, an enterprise intelligent business operating system. As Huawei Shengteng's full-stack AI, Huawei accounts for about 34% of revenue. Huawei's highest-level ecosystem partner focuses on CUDA migration to CANN, intelligent computing center construction, operation and maintenance, implementation of major privatization models, and on-site delivery by FDE engineers. China Soft is the main implementer of a large number of domestic government and enterprise model projects. Deeply participate in the large-scale implementation of Hongmeng City. Through allmeta, we enter the energy, electricity, and finance industries, create digital employees for customers that adapt to all B-side scenarios, and transform computing power into tokens, thereby upgrading the business model.
There is also the latest catalysis: a token partnership with Kimi, Dark Side of the Moon, is expected to open up a closed loop of “computational power-model-enterprise application” services and accelerate the commercialization of enterprise-level Agentic AI. From one-time project revenue to continuous funding and sharing, the gross profit level is expected to increase. The benchmark project is the Yalong River Hydropower 44 Million Energy Model Project. The AI business was 1,532 billion dollars in the first half of the year, and the management guided the target for the whole year; in the future, it mainly depends on whether the Token operation model can be scaled up. The gross margin of the AI business is significantly higher than traditional outsourcing, and the increase in share will drive the company's overall profit margin upward.