Evening News Trump was exposed in the Situation Room to discuss a "devastating blow" to Iran; Iran said it would not bow down and ask for negotiations with the United States first; the expectation of excessive oil supply or collapse
It was revealed that Trump's war room discussed a "devastating blow" to Iran; Iran said it would not bow its head and ask for negotiations with the United States first; expectations of oil supply overhang may be shattered; the largest power grid in the United States failed to meet the power supply target; the Bank of China's Apple AI function completed the registration, and partners include Alibaba; Intel's 18A yield rate rose to 85%; ASML's Q2 performance exceeded expectations.
Hong Kong stock market: On July 15, the three major Hong Kong stock indexes rose collectively. The Hang Seng Technology Index once rose to 2% and finally closed up 1.3%. The Hang Seng Index and the State-owned Enterprises Index closed up 1.4% and 1% respectively. On the market, large-scale science and technology stocks were generally active, with Meituan rising 5.3% and Tencent rising nearly 4%; the policy expectations of the "15th Five-Year Plan" to support innovative drugs throughout the chain have detonated the biomedical sector, with Zhaoyan New Drugs soaring nearly 24%, the most eye-catching performance; industry stock performance forecasts continued to be disclosed, Chinese securities stocks rose steadily, and mobile game stocks, film and television stocks, home appliance stocks, lithium battery stocks, coal stocks, and insurance stocks rose one after another. On the other hand, the storage semiconductor sector had a divergent trend today, showing a trend of opening higher and moving lower. GigaDevice fell 4.64%. PCB concept stocks and optical communication concept stocks followed suit. China Building Materials fell nearly 12% after the performance. Gold stocks, paper stocks, and power equipment stocks were weak throughout the day. U.S. stock market pre-market: Futures on the three major stock indexes rose, with Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.48%, S&P 500 futures up 0.2%, and Dow futures up 0.16%. Blue chip stocks had strong pre-market trends, with ASML rising nearly 4% and Aehr Test Systems rising nearly 30%. Semiconductor equipment stocks rose across the board, with Ram Research and Applied Materials rising by more than 3%, and Kelei rising by nearly 3%. Alibaba rose more than 5%; on the news, Alibaba Qianwen will be integrated into Apple Smart as an AI capability. PayPal rose over 18%. It was reported that it was jointly acquired by Stripe and Advent, with a premium of 28% and an overall valuation of more than US$53 billion. SK Hynix fell nearly 7% before the market opened, and surged 27% overnight to hit a new high since its listing. Commodity market: As of press time, WTI crude oil rose 1.1% to US$80.21/barrel; Brent crude oil rose 1.14% to US$85.7/barrel. Spot gold fell 0.56% to US$4,030.17 per ounce; spot silver fell 0.86% to US$58.195 per ounce. Top 20 Hong Kong stocks by trading volume Southbound funds bought a net HK$13.364 billion of Hong Kong stocks today. The turnover of southbound funds today was HK$134.221 billion, and the turnover of the Hong Kong stock market was HK$304.297 billion. Among the top ten traded stocks in the southbound direction, Alibaba-W, Tencent Holdings, and Zhipu received net purchases of HK$3.091 billion, HK$1.806 billion, and HK$1.540 billion respectively. Tracker Fund, SMIC, and Xiaomi Group-W suffered net sales of HK$1.329 billion, HK$653 million, and HK$461 million respectively. Iran says it will not bow to demands for talks with the United States first Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Garibabadi said in an interview on July 14, local time, that the passage of ships in the Strait of Hormuz is not important to the United States. U.S. President Trump himself admitted this, but the United States does not want Iran to have actual sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz. Garibabadi also said that Iran has never left the negotiating table. It was the United States that tore up the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding. Iran will never bow its head and demand negotiations with the United States. Is the war between the United States and Iran getting worse? Trump was exposed to a meeting in the White House Situation Room to discuss a "devastating blow" to Iraq In the past few days, the situation in the Middle East has escalated suddenly. As the competition between the United States and Iran over control of Hormuz intensified, the two sides conducted multiple rounds of mutual attacks, clouding the prospects of reaching a peace agreement. According to CCTV news reports, on the 14th local time, people familiar with the matter told the media that US President Trump held a meeting in the White House Situation Room that day to discuss a large-scale attack plan against Iran, which "will be more extensive in scale than the current strike around the Strait of Hormuz." It is understood that the meeting discussed strikes against Iranian targets in the Strait of Hormuz, and the core topic was "a new plan to carry out devastating strikes against Iran's strategic targets." As Trump convened this meeting, the US military launched air strikes against Iran in the Strait of Hormuz area and Iran's southern coast for the fourth consecutive day. Most of the targets were air defense and radar systems, anti-ship missile sites and drone launch sites. The cause was Iran's attack on multiple merchant ships in the Strait of Hormuz that did not follow its designated route. Conflicts between Russia, Ukraine and the Middle East are now escalating, and the industry says expectations of an oil supply glut have been shattered.
Global energy supplies are facing dual pressures, which has also brought the industry back to concerns about supply shortages. On the one hand, the conflict in the Middle East has erupted again, with US President Trump claiming that the United States will attack Iran's infrastructure, including bridges and power plants, next week unless Iran returns to the negotiating table. On the other hand, the situation between Russia and Ukraine has also begun to escalate. Ukraine has continued to launch attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, sinking more than 105 Russian ships in the past eight days. Russia attacked an Odessa merchant ship, killing 5 and injuring 12. Over the past three days, Russian drones and missiles have launched persistent attacks on the Odessa port, forcing major fertilizer companies like Kernel to temporarily halt operations at the nearby port of Chernomorsk. Since last Friday, the continued escalation of the situation has pushed crude oil prices up nearly 15%. On Tuesday, Brent crude oil rose to nearly $86/barrel, and WTI crude oil also returned to above $80/barrel. Energy markets are rapidly pricing in severe geopolitical risks and potential supply disruptions. Approaching the limit! The largest power grid in the United States failed to meet power supply targets, and AI has caused electricity costs to soar 60% PJM, the largest power grid in the United States, failed to meet the capacity auction reliability target for the third consecutive time. The power supply gap in 2028/2029 reached 6.8 GW, equivalent to the installed capacity of nearly 7 nuclear power plants. The demand for AI data centers has caused PJM's power supply costs to rise by more than 60%, and electricity prices soared 76% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year. Without a price cap, electricity prices would be about 70% higher than current levels. Bank of China’s Apple AI function completed registration, partners include Alibaba On July 15, Netcom China’s official account released an announcement announcing the registration information of 7 models that provide mobile phone-side generative artificial intelligence services. Among them, the “Apple Smart” large model of Apple Technology Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. has been registered on July 8, 2026. The applicable scenario is Apple mobile phones, which means that the AI functions of the National Bank version of Apple mobile phones are expected to be accelerated. According to the China Business News reporter, the partners of this AI function include Alibaba. Previously, Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai said that Apple talked with many companies in China and finally chose Alibaba. Intel's 18A yield rate has increased to 85%, and it is reported that it has received large orders from many companies such as Nvidia and OpenAI Intel has risen rapidly in the chip foundry field, and technology giants are paying attention to the company's advanced processes to solve the supply dilemma of TSMC's insufficient production capacity. It is reported that the yield rate of Intel's 18A process has increased from 65% in the previous quarter to 85%, second only to the 90% yield rate of TSMC's N2 (2nm) process, but much higher than the 50-60% yield rate of Samsung's SF2 process. According to the report, Intel wafer foundry has reached cooperation with companies such as AMD, Nvidia, Marvell, Microsoft, Micron and OpenAI. The EMIB-T yield rate of Intel's advanced packaging company also increased to 98%, strengthening its ability to compete with TSMC. Financial institution KeyBanc raised its target stock price from US$110 to US$155. Samsung is increasing its focus on AI storage: it will build a new DRAM factory in Jixing Park, planning to produce 100,000 wafers per month It is reported that Samsung Electronics plans to build a new DRAM factory in Giheung Semiconductor Park, with a planned monthly production capacity of 100,000 wafers and a total investment of tens of trillions of won. This move aims to seize the window of opportunity due to the surge in demand for artificial intelligence memory, and construction will start as soon as the third quarter of 2026. Currently, Samsung is simultaneously promoting the expansion of semiconductor production capacity in Pyeongtaek HBM production line, Gwangju wafer factory and other places. ASML’s Q2 performance exceeded expectations, and it raised its full-year guidance again. Low-NA EUV production capacity will increase by 30% in 2027. The continued strong demand for AI chips has driven a surge in orders. Semiconductor lithography equipment giant ASML's quarterly report has been strong, with many core indicators exceeding market expectations and raising its full-year performance outlook. ASML's net sales in the second quarter reached 9.33 billion euros, exceeding analysts' average forecast of 8.85 billion euros; net profit was 2.92 billion euros, also higher than market expectations of 2.64 billion euros. Gross profit margin was recorded at 54%, which was also better than the expected 52%.
Based on the strong performance momentum, ASMl has significantly raised the expected range of net sales for 2026 from the previous 36 billion to 40 billion euros to 43 billion to 45 billion euros, and the gross profit margin guidance has also been raised from 51% to 53% to 54% to 56%. The company said it plans to increase its production capacity by approximately 30% in 2027 based on approximately 65 low numerical aperture and low NA EUV equipment in 2026, and is studying the possibility of increasing it by another 30% in 2028. What IBM’s historic plunge means: Hardware is eating everyone’s cake! If artificial intelligence (AI) has seized the limelight of the software industry earlier this year, then IBM's profit warning this time has released a further clear signal: hardware may be eating away at the cake of everyone in the industry. IBM's stock price suffered an epic sell-off during intraday trading on Tuesday, closing down 25.2%, the largest single-day drop since its listing. The company's preliminary second-quarter profit and revenue reports were far below market expectations. Although IBM CEO Arvind Krishna stated in a letter to shareholders that the company had anticipated supply chain-related headwinds, they clearly underestimated the extent of customers' tilt in quarterly capital expenditures: Faced with tight hardware such as servers, storage and memory chips that are in short supply and soaring in price, IBM's corporate customers are pouring their budgets into snap-up purchases, thus significantly reducing investment in related software. (
Global energy supplies are facing dual pressures, which has also brought the industry back to concerns about supply shortages. On the one hand, the conflict in the Middle East has erupted again, with US President Trump claiming that the United States will attack Iran's infrastructure, including bridges and power plants, next week unless Iran returns to the negotiating table. On the other hand, the situation between Russia and Ukraine has also begun to escalate. Ukraine has continued to launch attacks on Russian energy infrastructure, sinking more than 105 Russian ships in the past eight days. Russia attacked an Odessa merchant ship, killing 5 and injuring 12. Over the past three days, Russian drones and missiles have launched persistent attacks on the Odessa port, forcing major fertilizer companies like Kernel to temporarily halt operations at the nearby port of Chernomorsk. Since last Friday, the continued escalation of the situation has pushed crude oil prices up nearly 15%. On Tuesday, Brent crude oil rose to nearly $86/barrel, and WTI crude oil also returned to above $80/barrel. Energy markets are rapidly pricing in severe geopolitical risks and potential supply disruptions. Approaching the limit! The largest power grid in the United States failed to meet power supply targets, and AI has caused electricity costs to soar 60% PJM, the largest power grid in the United States, failed to meet the capacity auction reliability target for the third consecutive time. The power supply gap in 2028/2029 reached 6.8 GW, equivalent to the installed capacity of nearly 7 nuclear power plants. The demand for AI data centers has caused PJM's power supply costs to rise by more than 60%, and electricity prices soared 76% year-on-year in the first quarter of this year. Without a price cap, electricity prices would be about 70% higher than current levels. Bank of China’s Apple AI function completed registration, partners include Alibaba On July 15, Netcom China’s official account released an announcement announcing the registration information of 7 models that provide mobile phone-side generative artificial intelligence services. Among them, the “Apple Smart” large model of Apple Technology Development (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. has been registered on July 8, 2026. The applicable scenario is Apple mobile phones, which means that the AI functions of the National Bank version of Apple mobile phones are expected to be accelerated. According to the China Business News reporter, the partners of this AI function include Alibaba. Previously, Alibaba Group Chairman Joe Tsai said that Apple talked with many companies in China and finally chose Alibaba. Intel's 18A yield rate has increased to 85%, and it is reported that it has received large orders from many companies such as Nvidia and OpenAI Intel has risen rapidly in the chip foundry field, and technology giants are paying attention to the company's advanced processes to solve the supply dilemma of TSMC's insufficient production capacity. It is reported that the yield rate of Intel's 18A process has increased from 65% in the previous quarter to 85%, second only to the 90% yield rate of TSMC's N2 (2nm) process, but much higher than the 50-60% yield rate of Samsung's SF2 process. According to the report, Intel wafer foundry has reached cooperation with companies such as AMD, Nvidia, Marvell, Microsoft, Micron and OpenAI. The EMIB-T yield rate of Intel's advanced packaging company also increased to 98%, strengthening its ability to compete with TSMC. Financial institution KeyBanc raised its target stock price from US$110 to US$155. Samsung is increasing its focus on AI storage: it will build a new DRAM factory in Jixing Park, planning to produce 100,000 wafers per month It is reported that Samsung Electronics plans to build a new DRAM factory in Giheung Semiconductor Park, with a planned monthly production capacity of 100,000 wafers and a total investment of tens of trillions of won. This move aims to seize the window of opportunity due to the surge in demand for artificial intelligence memory, and construction will start as soon as the third quarter of 2026. Currently, Samsung is simultaneously promoting the expansion of semiconductor production capacity in Pyeongtaek HBM production line, Gwangju wafer factory and other places. ASML’s Q2 performance exceeded expectations, and it raised its full-year guidance again. Low-NA EUV production capacity will increase by 30% in 2027. The continued strong demand for AI chips has driven a surge in orders. Semiconductor lithography equipment giant ASML's quarterly report has been strong, with many core indicators exceeding market expectations and raising its full-year performance outlook. ASML's net sales in the second quarter reached 9.33 billion euros, exceeding analysts' average forecast of 8.85 billion euros; net profit was 2.92 billion euros, also higher than market expectations of 2.64 billion euros. Gross profit margin was recorded at 54%, which was also better than the expected 52%.
Based on the strong performance momentum, ASMl has significantly raised the expected range of net sales for 2026 from the previous 36 billion to 40 billion euros to 43 billion to 45 billion euros, and the gross profit margin guidance has also been raised from 51% to 53% to 54% to 56%. The company said it plans to increase its production capacity by approximately 30% in 2027 based on approximately 65 low numerical aperture and low NA EUV equipment in 2026, and is studying the possibility of increasing it by another 30% in 2028. What IBM’s historic plunge means: Hardware is eating everyone’s cake! If artificial intelligence (AI) has seized the limelight of the software industry earlier this year, then IBM's profit warning this time has released a further clear signal: hardware may be eating away at the cake of everyone in the industry. IBM's stock price suffered an epic sell-off during intraday trading on Tuesday, closing down 25.2%, the largest single-day drop since its listing. The company's preliminary second-quarter profit and revenue reports were far below market expectations. Although IBM CEO Arvind Krishna stated in a letter to shareholders that the company had anticipated supply chain-related headwinds, they clearly underestimated the extent of customers' tilt in quarterly capital expenditures: Faced with tight hardware such as servers, storage and memory chips that are in short supply and soaring in price, IBM's corporate customers are pouring their budgets into snap-up purchases, thus significantly reducing investment in related software. (