This is a humanoid robot?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's pretty cool.

They can dance, they can fight, they can do all sorts of things.

Um, and it is in fact, um, going to become the very first publicly traded humanoid robot in mainland China and also the pretty much the very first pure play humanoid robot stock.

- listed on any public market because most other, um, peers are actually in the private valued market.

Is this-- what is this a story about?

The chip makers SK Hynix and Samsung seeing a huge rebound today.

Yeah.

There's clearly a lot going on for these stocks when you see that these names jumping by, uh, twenty-five percent to thirty percent-ish, and lots of different factors.

First, obviously, from the broader perspective, you have these solid earnings from US hyperscalers and the measures by the South Korean authorities to curb retail investors' buying of the leverage ETFs.

And that's why we're also seeing, from a positioning perspective, that that has driven, um, lots of the de-leveraging process to be pretty much wiped out already.

JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs both saying that we're getting close to, uh, that le- de-leveraging process to an end, and that is why the setup right now looks a bit cleaner and more attractive.

Now, w- with that being said, when you look at just SK Hynix specifically, it's also being helped by this rare or even, say, the very first direct share purchase by SK group chairman, and that boosts investor's confidence for the longer term prospect of the company that the, um, executives are also very positive about.

Meanwhile, you're watching Asian data center stocks after the latest tech earnings in the US.

Winnie, let's start then with TSMC shares lower today despite yesterday's upbeat results.

Yeah, exactly.

Down 7.3%, and that is the worst that it has seen in about a year.

Now, the results, w- when we talked about earnings yesterday, it was pretty positive, but it really is the forward-looking part of it that has been raising a bit of concerns, especially around its spending.

So CapEx coming at 60 to 64 billion US dollars for 2026.

That is at least 40 billion US dollars higher than the previous forecast.

So the question is, will there be enough demand to really be able to justify these spending? And if this is really running a little bit faster ahead of itself even.

And away from technology then, uh, Winnie, convenience store operator 7-Eleven getting a boost from some M&A headlines.

So when you look at the tech trade right now across Asia, whether we're talking about Taiwan, we're talking about South Korea or even Japan, what, what are we seeing today? Is it really the chip stocks that are leading the way higher?

higher?So when it comes to the AI or chip trade, so first of all, you mentioned how the macro environment does look better today.

So overall, that is supportive of, uh, risk assets, which are growth stocks, which are, uh, these chip names.

And on top of that, yes, you have that optimism around SpaceX, so that is also lifting the overall tech sentiment.

Specifically, South Korea is still a very volatile market.

We're talking about it up 8% today, right? But look at the swing over the past week.

On one day, I believe it was up 8%, another day down another 8%.

So help me understand then what some of the key drivers are right now for the Chinese equity market.

What's going on with some of the chip makers in Japan?

Yeah, so interestingly, we are seeing a bit of a catch-up there actually, as this AI rally really broadens and investors are looking for opportunities outside of the mega caps, up, uh, outside of Samsung, Hynix, and TSMC, and s- uh, further down the supply chain that can benefit.

And this is where these Japanese names come in because Japan actually have a very good selection of these AI names that are essential for the supply chain and even dominating the market.

So for example, you have the likes of the makers of MLCCs, just the Japanese names, Taiyo Yuden and Murata.

They were both up some 100% in the past month, and these two companies pretty much dominate this market.

So Japan actually has a lot of, um, essential AI-related, um, manufacturers, and that include, for example, the makers of the MLCCs.

You have Taiyo Yuden and Murata both seeing stocks jumping 100% in the past month.

I mean, are people feeling that there is a little bit more room to run in terms of what's been happening with artificial intelligence, or are people thinking that maybe what's happening in the US equity market is a little bit overextended? What is the perspective from the Asia Pacific?

How is that cycle, that assumption booing the markets right now and influencing investors?

Investors are pretty much just betting on the Trump put to come through, and as we talked about how it has shown up last year during Liberation Day and also what we saw back in, um, the Russia-Ukraine War.

So with investors, um, betting on that to happen, they ...

It actually makes it more difficult for them to bet, um, um, towards one side heavily just because the, the risk of being caught wrong-footed.

And hence we're seeing that trading volume remains very thin because of the lack of conviction.

And one investor put it this way actually, that markets are right now in this no war, no peace zone, so right in between.

That means there's no durable macro conviction at the point, and we're als- only looking at, um, some tactical relief, um, whenever escalation does not worsen.

So what does that say about how businesses are weathering the uncertainty?