Asia-Pacific markets rebounded on Friday after Thursday's sell-off. Tokyo's July inflation data showed a slight slowdown, and the yen strengthened against the dollar. The Nikkei 225 was nearly flat and Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.92%. The Hang Seng Index and mainland China's CSI 300 were nearly flat. Singapore's monetary policy remained steady. In the US, tech stocks continued to decline, with the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite extending losses. These are our stock picks of the week:
MICROSOFT
OpenAI announced a prototype search engine called SearchGPT, designed to provide fast, clear answers with relevant sources. It plans to integrate SearchGPT into its ChatGPT chatbot, posing a potential challenge to Google's dominance in search. Since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022, Alphabet's investors have worried about market share loss to Microsoft and OpenAI. SearchGPT aims to offer a more intuitive search experience with conversational follow-ups. OpenAI also introduced GPT-4o mini, a variant of its powerful GPT-4o model, and announced partnerships and new executive hires to bolster its position in the competitive AI market.
MSFT (Daily). Microsoft experienced a severe correction due to the blue screen incident last week, which broke the bullish projection line. From a technical side, the support levels at 410.00 and 390.00 are good buying regions.
VISA
Visa is leveraging AI and machine learning to combat fraud, preventing $40 billion in fraudulent activity from October 2022 to September 2023. Scammers use AI to generate and test card numbers, leading to significant losses via enumeration attacks. Visa processes 300 billion transactions yearly, assigning real-time risk scores to detect fraud. The company has invested $10 billion in technology over five years to enhance security. Generative AI is also used by cybercriminals for scams like voice cloning and deepfakes, making fraud more convincing and potentially increasing fraud losses to $40 billion in the US by 2027.
V (Daily). Visa entered a bearish momentum by making lower highs and lower lows in the last 4 months. Last week's gap-down of more than $10 below 260.00 was quite deep, we are looking to buy in the short-term period until it returns to the yellow zone.
GENERAL MOTORS
General Motors has unveiled the 2025 Chevy Corvette ZR1, the most powerful Corvette ever with a twin-turbocharged, 5.5-liter V8 engine producing over 1,000 horsepower and 828 foot-pounds of torque. This surpasses the previous ZR1's 755 horsepower. Expected to exceed 212 mph, pricing will be announced closer to production. The ZR1 joins the Corvette lineup, including the Stingray, E-Ray and Z06. An all-electric Corvette and SUV are being considered. The ZR1 aims to boost Corvette's brand and sales. The current Corvette sales around 34,500 units annually and average transaction prices at $106,000.
GM (Daily). General Motors' share price is down 12%. We expect the price to find support around 42.20 and rebound.
Fullerton Markets Research Team
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