Democrats poised to sweep House & Senate; CXMT buyback sparks a memory rally｜Daily News Recap

1104 ｜Dolphin Focus

Daily News Recap｜Dolphin Research

🐬 Macro/Industry

1. Democrats scored several key wins in U.S. midterm gubernatorial races, likely securing a majority of governorships nationwide and breaking Republicans' long-held local edge. Global markets dipped then rallied on the reversal in election momentum. Shifting policy expectations lifted risk appetite in the near term, but policy and regulatory paths remain uncertain, amplifying volatility in tech stocks.

2. Iran set seven preconditions and warned it would keep the Strait of Hormuz closed if unmet, while Trump confirmed limited U.S. strikes as both sides fought and talked. Geopolitical risk is supporting oil and safe havens, while post-election risk-on flows provide a counterbalance. Brent is range-bound at elevated levels, with ongoing disruptions across energy and shipping, and inflation risks lingering.

🐬 Single Stocks

1.$CXMT(688825.SH)

The chairman proposed lifting the buyback cap to RMB 5 bn to stabilize the stock. Storage-chain names in A-shares saw aggressive buying, the STAR 50 jumped over 9% in the afternoon, multiple semiconductor ETFs hit the 20% limit-up, and SMIC rose 8.87%. With downstream clients reportedly scrambling for advanced capacity slots three years out, a recovering memory cycle and domestic substitution boosted sentiment across the sector.

2.$SK Hynix(SKHY.US)

Reports indicate SK hynix's Solidigm NY storage plant plan has stalled. The core issue is the U.S. Dept. of Commerce not yet approving export licenses for U.S. equipment needed to expand its Dalian fab, and that expansion is a key funding source for the NY project. U.S. controls spilling into domestic chip investment highlight the game-theory risk across the global memory supply chain.

3.$Oracle(ORCL.US)

Under U.S. political pressure, Oracle canceled a multi-billion-dollar chip leasing deal with Tencent. The interruption in compute orders underscores deepening geopolitical fragmentation in the AI compute supply chain. It also raises the bar for domestic cloud vendors seeking overseas compute resources.

4.$Coinbase(COIN.US)

Coinbase officially launched Coinbase for Agents, enabling AI agents to execute trades and payments under user-defined permissions. Product rollout advances the Agent Finance paradigm and opens new crypto-finance use cases. However, regulation and fund security remain the key constraints.

5.$TENCENT(00700.HK)

Tencent unveiled Hunyuan Hy4, adding vision capabilities and placing its comprehensive performance in the first tier of open-source models. It strengthens long-horizon tasks, coding, and professional productivity use cases. Hy4 closes the multimodal gap further and narrows the distance to leading overseas open-source peers, pushing domestic open-source AI competition into a white-hot phase.

6.$JD.com(JD.US)

JD's acquisition of Ceconomy received EU approval with conditions, and closing is expected soon. Ceconomy is the parent of MediaMarkt and Saturn, operating over 1,000 offline stores in Europe. The deal fills JD's offline 3C retail channels in Europe, a key step in its overseas self-operated supply chain build-out, though local execution challenges remain significant.

7. Dolphin Research on earnings calls

AMD: 'AMD: Not Following Intel, Helios Scales Up' and 'AMD (Trans): Revenue to Grow 80%+ by 2027, Server CPU & GPU to Double'

Duolingo: 'Duolingo: DAU Re-accelerates — When Does the Green Bird's Wallet Catch Up?' and 'Duolingo (Trans): DAU Accelerates Again, Monetization Pivot Next Year'

Shopify: 'Shopify: As GMV Slows, Being 'Expensive' Becomes Original Sin?' and 'Shopify (Trans): AI Orders Up 3.3x, Q4 Rev. Still +30%'

Luckin Coffee: 'Luckin: Shedding Delivery Burden, Profitability Improves' and 'Luckin (Trans): Same-Store Under Pressure, Store Margin Back to Pre-Subsidy'

Yum China: 'Yum China (Trans): Same-Store Pressure, Openings and Margins Hold'

🐬 Top Gainers by Sector

A-shares: semiconductor materials & equipment, chipmakers, and gold. These segments led the advance.

HK stocks: gold, life science tools & services, and semiconductor materials & equipment. Performance was strong across the board.

U.S. stocks: seaport operators, heavy electrical equipment, and construction & engineering. These were the leading groups.

🐬 Watch for Tomorrow

1) Earnings due from Qualcomm, AppLovin, ARM, Uber, Coherent, Unity, and MercadoLibre. The slate is heavy with AI and platform names.

Risk disclosure and disclaimer: Dolphin Research Disclaimer and General Disclosure