The Zhitong Finance App learned that against the backdrop of a new round of sell-off in the bond market and increased global risk asset volatility, the stock market showed rare resilience. The S&P 500 index continues to advance steadily to record highs, showing that capital's preference for equity assets, especially AI, has not wavered. The latest opinion from HSBC's global investment research team put it bluntly: investors should not “trade against AI.” The bank believes that the AI sector has strong profit momentum, the monetization path is more clear, and the valuation is no longer expensive after adjustment, so the overall risk-to-benefit ratio is still attractive.
Profit momentum resonates with monetization signals
According to HSBC strategists, AI is still one of the most difficult trends in the current market to counter. Monetization signals continue to be positive: There are reports that OpenAI's corporate business sales have more than doubled since July, showing that companies' willingness to pay for generative AI is increasing. At the same time, demand for AI inference is growing at an accelerated pace, driving the cloud revenue of major hyperscale cloud vendors to strengthen, and GPU rental prices have remained strong. This means that the AI industry chain is shifting from a “capital expenditure story” to a “revenue cashing story,” and the market's concerns about the return on computing power investment have abated.
Although AI model pricing signals are mixed, and industry competition may suppress profit margins in some areas, profits that exceed expectations, continued upward expectations from analysts, and previous drastic revisions in technology stock valuations all indicate that quite a few downside risks have been factored into the market. After a round of “killing valuations,” the valuation of the technology industry chain seems to be relatively cheap, leaving room for subsequent increases.
The bond market storm is difficult to shake the main line of AI
The recent sell-off in the bond market has boosted yields, which usually puts pressure on highly valued growth stocks. However, stock market performance shows that AI's main profit support is hedging the impact of rising interest rates. HSBC believes that as long as AI monetization continues to be verified, corporate IT spending is skewed towards AI, and demand for cloud and computing power remains strong, there is still further potential for AI-driven stock market growth.
Judging from the market structure, AI trading has moved from being simply concept-driven to profit-driven. Investors are no longer concerned about “is there a story”, but “can they make money”. Cloud vendors have high capital expenses, but revenue fulfillment and order visibility have increased; increased demand for AI inference means that computing power consumption is shifting from training to inference, and the closed commercial loop is more clear; strong GPU rental prices reflect a shortage of computing power in demand. Together, these signals reinforce the fundamental support of the main AI line.
Configuration proliferation and risk coexist
From a configuration perspective, AI transactions may spread from a few leaders to a wider range of fields, including computing power infrastructure, cloud computing, semiconductors, AI applications, and supporting links such as electricity and energy. However, risks also cannot be ignored: if bond market fluctuations increase and yields continue to soar, growth stock valuations may still be under pressure; if AI capital expenditure returns fall short of expectations, regulations are tightened, or competition worsens, sector fluctuations will also increase.
The signal sent by HSBC is clear: at a time when clouds in the bond market coexist with new highs in the stock market, AI is still one of the clearest mainlines in the global equity market. For investors, instead of bucking the trend and shorting AI, it is better to find targets with reasonable profit cashout and valuation in the midst of fluctuations.