Disco Corp Drops, Minimax Soars, Japan Tobacco Gains

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0:08 The Stock Movers Report. Your roundup of companies making moves in the stock market. Harnessing the power of Bloomberg data.

0:16 Let's have a look at some of the stocks on the move today in Asia. I'm Caroline Hepka. Joining us now is Bloomberg's markets reporter, Anthony Stevens. Anthony, I love our chats because, you know, you know so much about AI and this is what everybody is learning, what I'm trying to absorb. Let's think about how it's affecting markets then today. This what you call bottleneck trade blowing up in terms of the capacity constraints around the semiconductor supply chain market. at the moment that is affecting a number of stocks in Asia tell me more.

0:49 Yeah, we're having a little bit of a bounce here as you guys come in, but the theme of the day has been to sell these bottleneck stocks. To recap, these are stocks that are making stuff that is not particularly difficult, but are in short supply. But now the investment pieces have turned against it because people have gone away from pricing an unlimited AI demand for years towards pricing in the money that they can get in the here and now. and they don't want to hear about capacity constraints. And we saw that in the reaction to LAM research results, and we see it in Asia with the reaction to, for example, DISCO results. That stock's down 4%.

1:26 It's also taken the rest of the Japan semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem and kind of passive component system with it. So Murata is down 3%. Advantest and TDK are down 3% to 4%. So there's a lot of weakness in that Japanese space. around hardware and semiconductors.

1:46 Okay so that's japan but you say that china's on fire today the government allowing exports llm exports but also chinese cars to europe what's the theme here.

1:59 So So yesterday, we had a little bit of a panic attack in Hong Kong around the fact that regulatory impulse in AI had picked up. First, they warned e-commerce players to clean up the act and stop having fake goods. And they also started a licensing regime around exports, high-tech exports, most notably AI LLMs, but also AI pharmaceutical names. At the moment, they've looked like they've given licenses to DeepSeq and Minimax, but and said that, in principle, they're not looking to restrict LLM access at all. They just want companies to apply for these licenses. And Minimax has already got that license. That stock's up 12.5% to lead the space.

2:41 But you're also seeing a bit of a short-covering dynamic. Remember that Hong Kong has been falling for a very long time. It's a consensus shot against the longs in Taiwan and Korea. So as people lose money in American AI, they have to cover their Chinese AI shorts. So we're seeing besides the gains in Minimax, Z.AI is up around 4%, BYD and Xiaomi are another two parts of the Chinese index that are strong because of strong sales, EV sales where you are. Their sales in Europe were fantastic. BYD sales were up 90%.

3:13 Yeah, falling over BYD cars in London in a way that, you know, you've never seen them before, to be honest. Now they're on lots of roads. Fascinating. Look, in terms of defensive plays, you've got Japan here at the centre of that.

3:31 Lots of Japanese defensive players are rallying here as that hardware trade unwinds. So the Nikkei isn't actually that bad, down 53 basis points. And a lot of that is because of this domestic consumption plays making up for the technology selling. People don't want to take money out of Japan. They just want to rebalance it. So foreigners have put in almost $ 100 billion into Japan over the last 12 months, and that money is just sloshing around. So for the moment, we have fast retailing up 2%, Japan Tobacco up 2%, Kirin Beer is up 2%, the people that make Muji up 2%, and you have Japan and Kirin Holdings, which makes beer up 1%. So, you know, it's the making of a cheap Tokyo holiday, but it's probably not enough

4:14 to keep the Nikkei going. But for now, these kind of names are holding the line.

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