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Nasdaq100 has added over 2% on Monday, in contrast with a more modest gain of 0.8% for the S&P500 and a barely notable 0.3% rise for the Dow Jones. But this is not a signal of general optimism from market participants; instead, it’s a switch in focus to Chinese companies. Often the outperformance of technology-rich Nasdaq is taken as a signal of an accelerating economy and a move by investors to look for assets that outperform the broader market during an economic boom. But along with that, we would see the Russell Index, which includes 2,000 small US stock market companies, outperform. And it was only up 0.2% over Monday, struggling to move into positive territory by the end of the day yesterday. On the other hand, Chinese companies are going from weak to growth drivers. However, this is nothing more than a recovery from lows after a year of aggressive declines. Earlier in March, China’s H-shar lost more than half its value in 13 months of sell-off. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 40% at its lowest point, plunging to 2016 lows. In the first half of March, the most significant acceleration came on signals that China and the US had moved from trade wars to financial wars as the latter threatened to delist. However, financial market turbulence is the last thing Xi Jinping needs this year, as there will be an election at the end of it, where he will be the leading candidate. Improving the economic situation is often the most effective way for the incumbent to gain electoral support. And China has a lot to work with. Much the same can be said for the US, where the November Senate elections will be held. Democrat Biden’s record-low approval rating plays against his party in the coming elections and the rising stagflation threat. The threat of delisting from the US is a blow to prestige, but it also closes off access to the softest financial terms for new companies and the deepest pool of liquidity. China could only afford it in the event of mania in Chinese markets and a booming Chinese economy. But that is not the case right now. The PRC economy lags behind its forecast growth trajectory due to continued covid lockdowns. Achieving the expected 5.5% GDP growth this year requires stimulus and easing of monetary policy, regardless of inflation risks and without regard to the rest of the world, which is tightening policy. This is a favourable environment for the market, at least for the time being. The Chinese equity market thus ceases to be a ‘sick man’, dragging global equity indices down and suppressing investor interest. On the contrary, even after returning to 5-week highs, Chinese equities still look very cheap, turning into a leading idea for the markets with a 9% jump in Baidu and a 6.6% rise in Alibaba on Monday. Placed amongst others in the US, Alibaba and Baidu, the biggest of which are now pulling the indices up, spreading positivity across the entire tech sector. Twitter’s 27% jump in shares on reports of Musk’s 9.2% stake in the company says more about the market’s mood to look for growth drivers than how much this passive share of the Tesla CEO can help the social network. And that’s good news a couple of weeks before the start of the new reporting season after a worrying first quarter.

NetEase is a Chinese technology company that operates in three segments - online games, search engine (Youdao) and online music (Cloud Music). The company operates both in China and internationally. It is famous for games such as 'The Lord of the Rings: Rise to War', 'Vikingard', 'Lifeafter' and 'Knives Out'. Its shares have fallen more than 10% since the beginning of the year, along with other companies in the Chinese technology sector, by the Chinese government's ambiguous action in the area of interference in their operations, fears of delisting in the US and deteriorating economic indicators in China. However, it is fair to say that its price has still proved to be far more resilient to the issues mentioned above than those of Tencent, Alibaba and Baidu. The company's revenue was 23.2 billion renminbi (US$3.5 billion) in the second quarter, growing 12.8 % year-on-year, slightly beating Wall Street analysts' expectations. Cloud Music revenue grew the most to 2.2 billion renminbi ($327.2 million), rising 29.5% year on year. Online gaming remains the most important revenue stream, with Q2 revenue of 18.1 billion renminbi ($2.7 billion). This increased by 15% compared to the same period a year ago. This was mainly due to the debut of Diablo Immortal, co-developed by NetEase with Blizzard Entertainment. According to the company's report, it became the most downloaded game on the IOS platform in some regions. Major franchise titles had their longevity extended, including the fantasy series Westward Journey and Westward Journey Online, as well as Identity V and Infinite Lagrange. "Players continued to gravitate to our longstanding games in the second quarter, highlighting our strength in game operations longevity. Moreover, the launch of Diablo® Immortal™ attracted the attention of gamers around the world, showcasing our exceptional mobile game development capabilities" - stated CEO William Ding. Revenue fell sharply in the Youdao area, down 29.5% year on year. However, this is the smallest source of revenue and only amounted to 956.2 million renminbi ($142.8 million) in the quarter. Q2 saw a net profit of $790 million, due to lower costs of player retention costs compared to new player acquisitions. Earnings per share (EPS) for those listed in New York were $1.22 on an adjusted basis, beating analysts' estimates by 17 cents. NetEase shares gained almost 3% before the market opened. Rafał Tworkowski, Junior Market Analyst, Conotoxia Ltd. (Conotoxia investment service) Materials, analysis and opinions contained, referenced or provided herein are intended solely for informational and educational purposes. Personal opinion of the author does not represent and should not be constructed as a statement or an investment advice made by Conotoxia Ltd. All indiscriminate reliance on illustrative or informational materials may lead to losses. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. CFDs are complex instruments and come with a high risk of losing money rapidly due to leverage. 82.59% of retail investor accounts lose money when trading CFDs with this provider. You should consider whether you understand how CFDs work and whether you can afford to take the high risk of losing your money.   Source: NetEase increases profits despite declining revenues

  Most stock markets in Asia are growing (up to 1%). The only two Chinese indices that show a decline are the Shanghai Composite and the Shenzhen Composite, which both fell by 0.19% and 1.22%, respectively. The Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong increased by 0.52%, the KOSPI in Korea increased by 0.45%, and the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia increased by 0.64%. Due to a holiday, the stock exchanges in Japan are closed today. The Nikkei 225 in Japan ended the day higher by 0.61%. The leading indicators in Asia have embraced the optimistic outlook of American investors. On the eve of a statement about the potential for loosening monetary policy by one of the Fed's leaders, US stock indices showed gains. Analysts claim that the Fed wants to avoid increasing the rate by 75 points at a subsequent meeting in December, but it will be challenging to do so without losing control of the economy. Due to the coronavirus situation in the nation, the main indicators in China continue to show a decline. Restrictive measures are being reinstated in some Chinese cities due to the rise in COVID-19 infections. More than 1.4 thousand infections were reported yesterday in Beijing alone. This is a record number since the pandemic's start. Essence Information Technology Securities, Guangdong Zhongshan, and Shijiazhuang Yilin showed the largest declines in value among the Shanghai Composite's constituents, falling by 20%, 9.9%, and 6.9%, respectively. The Hong Kong indicator, on the other hand, indicates an increase, which was made possible by an increase in the value of the securities of Alibaba companies (by 3%), JD.com (by 2.2%), CNOOC (by 1.8%), Longfor Group (by 1.7%), as well as Tencent and Ping An Insurance, which each gained 1.4% and 1.3%. Baidu, Inc.'s stock price increased by 2.6% due to a decrease in net loss for the third quarter and an increase in revenue and profit. The value of the securities of the biggest companies increased, which helped the Korean KOSPI rise. Shares of Samsung Electronics and Hyundai Motor both saw price increases of 0.5% and 0.3%, respectively. The increase in stock prices for the banking sector's National Australia Bank (+0.8%), Commonwealth Bank of Australia (+0.0%), and Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (+0.3%) contributed to the increase in the Australian S&P/ASX 200. BHP (0.9%) and Rio Tinto (0.1%) also rose in price. Energy sector companies' stock values increased as well: Woodside Energy shares increased by 1.1%, and Beach Energy shares increased by 2.6%. Relevance up to 15:00 2022-11-24 UTC+1 Company does not offer investment advice and the analysis performed does not guarantee results. Read more: https://www.instaforex.eu/forex_analysis/327953

Implications for China's economy and investors' perspectives China aims to foster a virtuous circle of economic growth through technology innovation, technology application, business model innovation, productivity enhancement, economic growth, and further investment in technology. In a globalised world, this circle could be sustained even if certain critical technologies were lacking. However, in the fragmentation game that increasingly dominates the world’s order, falling behind in technology innovation could disrupt the virtuous circle and result in declining productivity, ultimately hindering economic development. Investors take this risk into account when considering investments in China, along with factors like the slower-than-expected economic recovery and various constraints. These constraints include a highly leveraged economy, particularly among local governments and the property sector, which somewhat restricts the Chinese authorities' ability to implement stimulus measures without potentially causing future financial turmoil. The extent of the impact on productivity in the Chinese internet sector, manufacturing sector and the broader economy, as well as how it will unfold, remains uncertain. Some investors positioning themselves for these changes are looking at companies capable of developing generative AI applications, manufacturing AI-related hardware, or producing AI-relevant microchips, semiconductor materials or equipment. Some Chinese companies actively sought after by investors include Baidu, 360 Security, Lenovo, Shanghai Boasight Software, Iflytek, Unisplendour, ZTE and Foxconn Industrial Internet, which are listed on the mainland and Hong Kong stock exchanges.[i] While major Chinese internet and technology companies are aware of the need to adapt their business models to potential disruptions, their generative AI products and new applications have yet to demonstrate promising prospects and significant impacts on their revenues. Baidu has shown some progress with its early focus on AI and the launch of ERNIE, an AI model capable of search, dialogue and content generation. Xiaomi continues to pursue an AI and Internet of Things development path, utilising deep learning to connect mobile and IoT devices. Tencent has developed its own AI models, including HunYuan and WeLM, facilitating text generation, dialogue, translation and gaming. Alibaba has created the Multi-Modality to Multi-Modality Multitask Mega-transformer (M6) model, while JD.COM has come up with pre-trained language models for natural language understanding and generation. Bytedance contributes a multilingual machine translation model, and NetEase offers the YuYan language model. These efforts are commendable but yet to have meaningful impact on their business models and much more needs to be done. Some of these stocks which trade at reasonable valuations based on their existing businesses may present interesting investment opportunities, but investors should take into consideration that high growth could be something of the past for these companies. As technology innovation and productivity growth hold the key to success, companies that advance in intelligent manufacturing which employs generative AI may be the next “new-new thing” to watch in China in the coming years. Investors can potentially benefit from following developments in this area. Concluding remarks China's drive towards a virtuous circle of economic growth, fuelled by technology innovation and productivity enhancement, is of utmost importance. Investors evaluating China should acknowledge the challenges posed by generative AI, while also recognising potential investment prospects in companies poised to leverage these transformative changes.