Mid-year review | The "report card" of global major asset classes is released! The Nasdaq rose nearly 18% year-to-date and maintained its strength, with gold, silver, and copper all surging.

In the first half of 2024, the world situation is turbulent, and hot events emerge one after another. Investors have also witnessed one "historic event" after another. Among the major asset classes, the US stocks supported by the "AI concept" and the "Big Seven" have remained strong since last year, repeatedly reaching new highs; and market hotspots have continued to rotate, from the Nikkei Index, gold, and copper to silver, and then to the Hong Kong stock market. The "favorite" of investors keeps changing.

During these turbulent six months, which asset categories globally stand out? And which market symbols are performing poorly? Let's take a closer look first.

The Nasdaq Composite Index, dominated by technology companies, maintained its strength in the first half of 2024, with a nearly 18% increase since the beginning of the year; including Nvidia, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other US stock giants repeatedly hitting new highs, various companies in the AI industry chain blossoming, driving the overall rise of US stocks.

For the subsequent trend, bulls believe that the current financial environment in the USA is relatively loose, with expanding corporate profit margins, coupled with the continuous AI boom, US stocks are expected to continue to be supported; while bears mainly emphasize from the perspective of interest rates, stressing that a sustained high interest rate environment may lead to an economic hard landing, and believe that the market has ignored many risks, such as risks related to the US domestic political situation, geopolitical factors, and the market being overly concentrated on a few stocks like Nvidia.

Looking at the overall picture, the Hong Kong stock market showed a trend of volatile upward movement in the first half of the year, with a rapid surge in May followed by a pullback. Year to date, the Hang Seng Index has risen by 5.76%, while the Hang Seng Tech Index has fallen by 1.67%.

The reasons for the earlier surge include central bank bond purchases, further loosening of local real estate policies, policy reasons such as statements on finance, money, and real estate at the April Political Bureau meeting exceeding market expectations, as well as fund-related reasons such as foreign capital inflows, return of trading funds and short covering; while the subsequent pullback, apart from profit-taking after the earlier overbought situation, is related to the still weak mainland fundamentals and continued private credit contraction. As the market enters the overbought range, increased investor disagreements and profit-taking are not unexpected. The Hang Seng Index can find some support around the 18000 level.

With Warren Buffett's continued bullishness on the Japanese stock market, the wave of 'Nikkei fever' is sweeping the globe. Under the influx of foreign capital, the Japanese stock market, which has been dormant for more than 30 years, has finally entered a high-profile moment. The Nikkei 225 index successfully broke through 40,000 points in the first half of the year, attracting global attention. Although there has been some retracement, it still recorded a 15.34% increase for the year. However, as the Bank of Japan gradually exits the era of negative interest rates and stops buying Japanese stock ETFs, this move may cause volatility in the Japanese stock market in the short term.

In general, the performance of the Japanese stock market in the following periods this year depends mainly on whether Japan can truly emerge from deflation and take a more solid step towards achieving the 2% inflation target. This requires continuous adjustments to relevant policies and controls by the authorities, as well as the release of a large amount of accumulated savings by the public into daily consumption and investment.

Amid geopolitical uncertainties, high inflation, and massive debt issuance, the safe-haven asset gold shines even brighter. COMEX gold futures have performed well in the first half of the year and have been running at high levels overall, with a cumulative increase of 12.69% year to date. Due to the correlation between the two precious metals, silver has also started to catch up with the rise of gold. Currently, the increase in COMEX silver futures has exceeded that of gold, with a cumulative increase of 22.81% year to date. In addition, due to the surge in demand for renewable power brought about by the AI boom, copper, the key metal in the production of electrical equipment, has entered a bull market. Coupled with the decline in production in Chile, the world's largest copper supplier, copper prices continue to rise, with a cumulative increase of 13.85% year to date.