Many Many Happy Returns

Tian Xuan Zhou (Oliver)
Bachelors Student, New European College – Munich

Possibly the best month I have ever navigated through so far in my life. Only 3 losing days so far in the month of April, losing 0.67% on the 9th, 0.19% on the 10th and 0.08% on the 17th. Still much more to polish up and learn, especially on profit taking, although seeing all these green numbers on the unrealised column feels amazing, there is no shame in taking some profits at some point even if it means that future gains are not as significant.

Asia

Japan

Much better performance this week, both Topix and Nikkei clawing its way back to their year highs. Although recently hit by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that later triggered tsunami warnings, an event risk of another followup earthquake and tsunami still persists.

The strait remains blockaded, both by Iranian and American blockades, Saudi Arabia’s east-west pipeline has proven to be a much valuable lifeline preventing a worst case scenario oil shock. Crude oil exports from the Western Yanbu port have almost tripled since the beginning of the conflict.

Although not a very good week for the Defense sector, this sector should still generate a lot of alpha, especially with speculation of the United States potentially leaving NATO, this would be a huge development for global security. Furthermore, Japan has just lifted its ban on lethal arms exports for the first time since world war 2, moving towards this expansion of the defense industry. This sets up Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to become major suppliers of equipment such as missiles. Still remaining positive towards the defense contractors.

Tech still being the outperformer last week, with AI and semis still driving much of the alpha and probably will do for much of the near future. Fanuc was relatively strong last week, but not outperforming, although classified as robotics, around +6% last week. Daikin Industries however, most definitely outperformed, especially on Thursday when Elliott Investment Management disclosed that they took a stake in Daikin, mentioning that the company would improve margins ​and shareholder returns and review ​non-core assets.

HK/CN

Economic data, 1Q GDP which came in around 5%, mainly due to continuing the strong export performance of 2025, this is outperforming the year round estimate for 4.5%. Furthermore mentioned in the previous article, snapped their three year deflationary streak, mainly driven by the energy shock. With that being said, I am sure the central committee will be much more reluctant to use policy to stimulate the economy.

Popmart 9992HK, around +10%. Slowly bouncing from the bottom, continued to attract strong southbound inflows last week. Although still seeing some downgrades from brokers, mainly worried about the concentrated earnings on Labubu, still doing much of the heavy lifting. I was also worried about this, mentioned in previous articles, however other up and coming products, such as Twinkie Twinkie, upwards of 1,600% in sales growth in 2025, showing some success in diversification other than Labubu. I think the slowdown in growth will already be priced in by the street, not so much retail, but I think there is still value here.

Alibaba 9988HK, around +13%. This AI push is doing heavy lifting for sentiment, not being traded as a traditional e-commerce platform anymore but also a Chinese based AI hyperscaler. Currently looking at margin improvements, EBITDA, maybe a similar case like Amazon in 2024 and 2025. Furthermore, stock price is being supported by share buybacks, which Alibaba is upsizing their share buyback program.

Not much to add on BYD 1211HK or TCL Electronics 1070HK, both performed okay, around +5% for both names, TCL starting to consolidate at this level.

US

Fear and greed is almost back to extreme greed.

Another bizarre all time graph, Allbirds, a footwear manufacturer, pivoting into GPU infrastructure, +583% in a single day, unbelievable. Saw this in premarket at +173% and thought that it was already ridiculous. The even more bizarre price movement, the remainder of my Beyond Meat share caught a 41% price movement upwards for absolutely no reason at all. No idea.

More earnings this week. The ones I am more interested in are Tesla, Lam research, Texas Instruments and Vertiv this Wednesday. Intel reporting on Thursday with American Express and Lockheed Martin. However, most anticipating next Wednesday, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and my favourite name this month, Amazon.

Financials. More earnings, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America both with clean beats top and bottom line, Charles Schwab missed top line estimates but beat on revenue, more interestingly, launching their own spot crypto trading platform. Sector wide sentiment is very strong, due to a resilient US economy. Jefferies, still going strong, almost up 22% and JPMorgan around +4.5%.

Amazon. Can do no wrong, +22% since initial long position. Formed a higher low on Monday, but then more event driven gains. First of all a deal with Anthropic expanding their strategic collaboration. An initial 5 billion investment into Anthropic up to an additional 20 billion in the future where Anthropic will commit more than 100 billion on chips and computing power from Amazon. Furthermore, another deal with NEURA Robotics where they will use AWS as primary cloud provider, hosting their ai training.

Intel. Trading into results this week, I have my doubts that this set of results will be impressive at all, similar to the last set of results, I think retail is expecting too much, will be selling before Thursday.

Nike, around +7.5% since buying in. Starting to see some good progress, initially by internal buying of the stock and also Tim Cook disclosing his positions in buying the stock.

Palantir and Zscaler, names that gave back a lot of their gains this month starting to reverse course.