On March 18th, last week, data such as CPI and PPI showed that the inflationary pressure in the United States was still there, which reduced the market’s bet on the Fed’s interest rate cut before June, and the three major US stock indexes all recorded a cumulative decline.
This week, investors will welcome the Fed’s meeting on interest rates. It is widely expected that the Fed will stay put, but they still want to know more clues about when policymakers will start to cut interest rates. It is worth noting that this meeting will announce the interest rate bitmap and economic outlook together, so this may be the most important meeting to discuss interest rates before June. Some analysts pointed out that this week’s Fed meeting may be more influential than investors thought.
In addition to the Fed’s interest rate decision, the Bank of Japan may also make big moves this week. It is reported that the Bank of Japan is expected to decide to lift the negative interest rate policy as the core of large-scale monetary easing policy at the monetary policy meeting held on 18th and 19th. If it is really decided, it will be the Bank of Japan’s interest rate hike again since 2007, which will be a turning point to start the normalization of financial policy.
In view of the fact that the average wage increase rate of labor-capital negotiation (Spring Fight) announced by the Japan Federation of Trade Unions on the 15th this year is 5.28%, which has risen to a high level in the past 33 years, the Bank of Japan believes that the probability of realizing a virtuous circle of rising wages and prices together is large enough. It is reported that the Bank of Japan plans to maintain a relaxed financial environment after lifting the negative interest rate policy and envisages a de facto zero interest rate policy. Whether financial institutions will raise the interest rates of variable housing loans and corporate loans linked with short-term interest rates will become the focus.
Although the market has expected, we should still be alert to the impact of the last central bank in the world to tighten the "faucet" on the market.
Compared with macro policies, the market may be more looking forward to this week’s AI feast, GTC 2024 conference in NVIDIA. On the afternoon of March 18th, local time (early morning of March 19th, Beijing time), NVIDIA GTC 2024 will be officially opened, and Huang Renxun, CEO of NVIDIA, will give a keynote speech. Technology giants such as OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta and Google DeepMind will send representatives to attend the meeting, and NVIDIA industrial chain companies such as Hon Hai and Quanta will also attend.
As the absolute leading enterprise in the field of AI, NVIDIA’s every move is regarded as a weather vane, and investors are expecting it to continue to bring surprises to the market and make the AI feast continue.
[Market Review]
Last week, the Dow fell by 0.02%, the third consecutive week of decline. The Nasdaq fell 0.7% and the S&P 500 index fell 0.13%, both of which fell for the second consecutive week.
[One-week preview]
[Weekend Highlights]
Morgan Stanley looks forward to the Federal Reserve’s FOMC in March: inflation and shrinking attitude are the focus
Inflation and economic forecasts may reflect more optimism; The Federal Reserve may announce the QT slowdown information in May, and begin to implement it in June.
The most likely plan of the Bank of Japan is to guide the short-term interest rate to 0%-0.1%.
According to reports, the most likely plan of the Bank of Japan is to raise the policy interest rate by more than 0.1 percentage point to guide the short-term interest rate to rise to the range of 0%-0.1%. Japan’s largest trade union announced that it won the largest salary increase in 30 years, which strengthened the expectation of the Bank of Japan to "cancel negative interest rates" next week.
NVIDIA GTC2024: Look at the application side besides B100.
GTC NVIDIA Conference will be held at the San Jose Convention Center and online from March 18th to 21st. This is one of the most important technology release platforms in NVIDIA every year, and it is recognized as the "AI weather vane" by the industry. In this regard, () analysts Liu Wenshu and Li Peijing said in the latest report that NVIDIA is expected to release Blackwell architecture and B100 chip at the conference, and the hardware series will be fully upgraded. NVIDIA’s robot series applications are also expected to usher in an iteration. In addition, NVIDIA will release a series of generative AI applications, which may become its new growth point.
Apple introduced a 30 billion parameter multi-modal model.
Recently, Apple’s R&D team published a paper "MM1: Methods, Analysis & Insights from Multimodal LLM Pre-Training", which released the multi-modal large-scale model MM1 for the first time, showing the company’s progress and strength in AI. It is reported that the maximum parameter quantity of MM1 is 30 billion. This model supports enhanced context learning and multi-image reasoning, and it has performed well in some multimodal benchmark tests.
490 million dollars! Cook concealed that "iPhone is not easy to sell in China" and Apple agreed to lose money and settle.
According to national business daily news, on Friday (15th) local time, Apple said in a legal document that it agreed to pay 490 million US dollars to reach a class action settlement. The lawsuit accuses Apple of violating US federal securities laws because its CEO Cook made false and misleading statements about the company’s performance in the China market. The lawsuit accuses Apple CEO Tim Cook of misleading investors by exaggerating the demand for iPhone in China in 2018.
Boeing whistleblower’s last words exposed: If something happens to me, I will definitely not commit suicide.
According to the Global Times, John barnett, an employee of Boeing Company in the United States, once exposed the serious problems of Boeing passenger plane to the media, and was found dead in his car a few days ago. The local investigation department said that he died of "self-mutilation". However, according to a report by ABC local channel on 15th, a close friend of barnett revealed in an interview that barnett had told her before his death that "if something happened to me, I would definitely not commit suicide".
Tesla USA: All Model Y will increase by $1,000 on April 1st.
Tesla official website shows that the price of all Model Y models will increase by $1,000 on April 1st. After the price increase, Model Y costs $43,990, the long-life version costs $48,990, and the high-performance version costs $52,490.
American technology companies have laid off more than 50 thousand people this year! Artificial intelligence talents are still in short supply.
According to the data of Layoffs.fyi, a tracking website for layoffs in the technology industry, more than 200 technology companies have laid off more than 50,000 employees since the beginning of this year. This is a continuation of the "year of layoffs" in 2023, when more than 260,000 employees of nearly 1,200 technology companies lost their jobs. However, in the technology industry, there are also huge differences in the current market. Although layoffs in other places continue, the field of artificial intelligence is promoting the return of rapid recruitment and expansion.
[financial calendar]