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Wall St Week Ahead Artificial intelligence gives real boost to US stock market

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Wall St Week Ahead Artificial intelligence gives real boost to US stock market

 Recent advances in artificial intelligence are fueling optimism over how businesses can operate more productively in the years ahead. They are also providing a big boost to the stock market.

The S&P 500’s (.SPX) 9% rally this year has been driven by a handful of the index’s biggest stocks, a number of which are at the center of the AI frenzy that has spread in the wake of the chatbot sensation ChatGPT.

Five stocks – Microsoft (MSFT.O), Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL.O), Nvidia (NVDA.O), Apple (AAPL.O) and Meta Platforms (META.O) – are responsible for the S&P 500’s entire year-to-date return, said Jessica Rabe, co-founder of DataTrek Research. About 25% to 50% of those gains are owed to “the buzz around artificial intelligence,” she noted.

A recent Societe Generale analysis zeroed in on 20 stocks widely owned by AI-related exchange-traded funds, whose overall assets under management have grown almost 40% this year.

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Removing those stocks from the S&P 500 would reduce the index’s performance by roughly 10 percentage points, putting stocks in negative territory for the year, SocGen’s analysis showed.

“It’s the AI-driven stocks that are getting the strongest returns,” said Manish Kabra, head of US equity strategy at SocGen. “As a secular theme, for sure, it’s attractive.”

The rush of AI developments has analysts licking their lips at the profit potential stemming from new revenue opportunities and productivity improvements.

Goldman Sachs strategists estimate that generative AI could create productivity gains that result in S&P 500 companies expanding profit margins by about 4 percentage points in a decade following widespread adoption.

Indeed, optimism over AI is a key factor supporting a stock market facing numerous headwinds. Those include uncertainty over the U.S. Congress coming to agreement to raise the debt ceiling and avoid a default, and worries the economy may be on the verge of a downturn, as the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes filter through the economy.

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“We are strongly of the view that AI will change the world,” Jim Reid, strategist at Deutsche Bank, said in a note titled, “Will ChatGPT prevent the US recession?”

The AI excitement has helped propel hefty gains for some stocks. For example, shares of Microsoft, the second-largest U.S. company by market value, have climbed 32% this year. The software giant has grabbed headlines with its partnership with ChatGPT creator OpenAI and sprucing up its Bing search engine with AI.

Shares of Nvidia, the fifth-biggest U.S. company by market value whose chips are central in the AI excitement, have soared 110% this year.

The Global X Robotics & Artificial Intelligence ETF (BOTZ.O) has jumped nearly 30% this year.

Investors next week will be keeping an eye on developments regarding the U.S. debt ceiling, as well as inflation data and corporate earnings including results from Nvidia.

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Other factors have supported megacap stocks. Those include a decline in Treasury yields from last year’s highs that has soothed concerns over tech valuations and investors viewing megacaps as safety plays in an uncertain environment.

At the same time, even the shares of potentially transformative technologies are vulnerable to price bubbles, as history shows. A dotcom stock mania helped markets roar higher in the late 1990s, but a crash followed a few years later, leaving only a handful of internet names standing.

A BofA Global Research report published Friday said AI stocks were in a “baby bubble” in comparison with far larger asset price moves seen in areas such as internet stocks and bitcoin over the last few decades.

Nonetheless, many investors say that AI is no fad.

King Lip, chief strategist at Baker Avenue Wealth Management in San Francisco, calls the developments in AI a “game changer.” His firm owns shares of Microsoft, Nvidia and Alphabet.

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“It goes beyond the next shiny object,” Lip said. “The path is pretty clear on how generative AI can lead to earnings growth for these companies.”

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China wins WTO dispute with Australia over steel products

China wins WTO dispute with Australia over steel products

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China wins WTO dispute with Australia over steel products

China has won a nearly three-year-long dispute with Australia at the World Trade Organization over tariffs on steel products that began during a low point of bilateral relations between the countries, and Australia’s trade minister said Wednesday his government accepted the ruling.

Beijing took its complaint to the WTO in June 2021 over Australia’s extra duties on railway wheels, wind towers and stainless steel sinks imported from China. Trade in these products was worth 62 million Australian dollars ($40.4 million) in 2022.

On Tuesday, the WTO panel adjudicating the case in Geneva, Switzerland, found that Australia’s investigating authority, the Anti-Dumping Commission, had acted inconsistently with some articles of the anti-dumping agreement.

Australia’s Trade Minister Don Farrell said in a statement Wednesday that Canberra accepted the WTO’s ruling and supported a rules-based trading system.

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“Australia will engage with China and take steps to implement the panel’s findings,” Farrell said.

“Australia remains committed to a fully functioning WTO dispute settlement system so that the rights and obligations of all WTO members can be enforced,” he added.

They fled kibbutzim after Hamas attacked. Now, many Israelis must decide whether to go back.
Trade tariffs have been a hot topic between Beijing and Canberra in recent years after China imposed a raft of sanctions on Australian goods in 2020 during the most recent nadir in the bilateral relationship. It is estimated that the tariffs cost the Australian economy 20 billion Australian dollars ($13 billion).

Most of the tariffs have since been lifted as the relationship thawed, but tariffs on wine, rock lobster and some abattoirs still remain.

In April, Australia suspended a complaint to the WTO in a bid to reopen the Chinese market to Australian barley, which had been one of the products targeted by the tariffs and was widely seen as the new Australian government’s attempts to repair relations with Beijing.

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The Australian government has also halted another WTO dispute against China over sanctions on Australian wine worth about 1.1 billion Australian dollars ($720 million) in exchange for a review by China to be completed by the end of March. 

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GameStop shares fall as video game retailer faces competition, weak spending

GameStop shares fall as video game retailer faces competition, weak spending

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GameStop shares fall as video game retailer faces competition, weak spending

GameStop’s (GME.N), opens new tab shares fell more than 14% on Wednesday, as the brick-and-mortar video game retailer reported a decline in fourth-quarter revenue on the back of a spending slowdown and rising competition from e-commerce firms.

The Grapevine, Texas-based company also said late on Tuesday that it had cut an unspecified number of jobs, joining Japan’s Sony (6758.T), opens new tab and Electronic Arts (EA.O), opens new tab in a bid to reduce costs as economic uncertainty hits discretionary spending.

GameStop is set to lose more than $700 million in its market capitalization if the losses hold.

As of Tuesday, GameStop’s stock had fallen nearly 12% this year, as the retail and ecommerce environment remains intensely competitive for the company, which was once a mainstay of American malls.

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The company has a total of 4,169 stores as of Feb. 3, compared with 4,413 in January last year.

GameStop was hailed as the pioneer of Wall Street’s so-called meme stocks. The stock’s price rose as much as 100 times over several months in 2021, largely on the sentiment of individual buyers connected through the Reddit (RDDT.N), opens new tab community forum WallStreetBets.

“No sooner has the meme stock craze been resurrected by Donald Trump’s media company enjoying a big share price boost, it’s somewhat ironic that the grandfather of meme has fallen flat on its face,” AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said.

Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group (DJT.O), opens new tab rose more than 12% on Wednesday, a day after its stellar Nasdaq debut.

GameStop’s first adjusted per share profit in four quarters also failed to lift investors’ spirits. The company’s earnings were 22 cents per share on an adjusted basis for the fourth quarter ended Feb. 3, after breaking-even in the third quarter.

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Exclusive: First Quantum execs discuss investment, disputed copper with Chinese officials

Exclusive: First Quantum execs discuss investment, disputed copper with Chinese officials

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Carnival Corp (CCL.N), opens new tab, (CCL.L), opens new tab raised its annual profit forecast on Wednesday, betting on a record year of bookings for its cruises as the industry has its “revenge travel” moment.

Cruise companies are experiencing all-time high booking rates as travelers switch to cheaper sea-borne experiences over expensive land-based alternatives such as booking hotels or flights, allowing operators to hike prices.

However, U.S.-listed shares of the company, which owns the Cunard and Holland America Line cruise lines, reversed course from premarket and were last down about 3%. They have risen about 94% in the last 12 months.

“This has been a fantastic start to the year,” CEO Josh Weinstein said in a statement.

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“We delivered another strong quarter that outperformed guidance on every measure, while concluding a monumental wave season that achieved all-time high booking volumes at considerably higher prices.”

The company’s first-quarter revenue rose to $5.41 billion, roughly in line with analysts’ expectations.

Bookings for the rest of 2024 remain the best year on record with total customer deposits reaching a first-quarter all-time high of $7 billion, the company said.

Carnival has estimated an impact of up to $10 million on both adjusted EBITDA and adjusted net income for the full year following the Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse on Tuesday.

The company said in January that strong demand trends during the year were expected to offset the impact it was seeing due to the re-routing of ships in the Red Sea region.

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The cruise operator now expects adjusted profit per share of 98 cents in 2024, compared with its prior forecast of 93 cents. Analysts on average were expecting a profit of $1 per share, according to LSEG data.

Adjusted cruise costs, excluding fuel in constant currency, were up 7.3% in the first quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier. 

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