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SignalPlus Macro Research Report: Twitter rebrands as 'X', WorldCoin token WLD goes live.

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The Hang Seng Index showed initial weakness, with futures falling nearly 2% on the day, before experiencing a delayed reaction and rebounding from the bottom upon the opening of the New York market.

Original Title: "SignalPlus Macro Research Report (20230725)"

Original Source: SignalPlus Chinese

Yesterday was PMI data day, and first the UK's July manufacturing PMI index was 45. Then Germany announced that its manufacturing PMI index was 38.8, lower than the expected 41 and hitting a new 40-month low. These results still show the long-term trend of manufacturing struggling under the pressure of rising interest rates and supply chain challenges. However, the service sector PMI continues to show strong performance due to the resilience of consumer spending.

In the United States, the July S&P manufacturing PMI performed slightly better, rising 2.7 points to 49, while the initial services PMI fell slightly to 52.4, but still remained in the expansion zone. However, with the better PMI index came an unwelcome price rebound, with input prices rebounding from 47.2 last month to 50.6, and comments stating that "the survey results of the sales price index have shown a worrying signal, and inflation may be difficult to further reduce to below 3% in the short term."

When it comes to price pressure, there are reports that a refinery owned by Exxon will be shut down for 3-4 weeks due to a malfunction in the catalytic cracking unit, causing a surge in gasoline futures prices. The supply shortage coincides with OPEC+ already starting to cut production, resulting in crude oil prices rising to the highest level since May and breaking through the 200-day moving average.

Even though inflation expectations have slowed significantly after several recent weak CPI releases, the rise in gasoline prices has not gone unnoticed by the market. After a long period of stagnation, demand for inflation-protected securities (TIPS) has risen significantly for two consecutive days.

Just before the upcoming meetings of the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, and Bank of Japan this week, the Chinese leadership just concluded a Central Political Bureau meeting and set the policy tone for the second half of 2023. Unlike previous expectations, officials acknowledged that the current economic operation is facing "new difficult challenges" and pledged to steadily promote stimulus measures within the current policy space. The meeting also pointed out the need to "timely adjust and optimize real estate policies" and "activate the capital market" while maintaining monetary stability. Finally, the party called for the "formulation and implementation of a comprehensive debt package to effectively prevent and resolve local debt risks," showing a softening stance on the continued crackdown on local government risks.

Interestingly, due to very low expectations for the conference, the Hang Seng Index initially performed weakly, with futures falling nearly 2% on the day, only to experience a delayed reaction until the opening of New York, rebounding from the bottom to 4%. Although the timing of the rebound is questionable and details of economic stimulus measures are still lacking, considering the relatively low holdings of Hong Kong and Chinese stock markets, there is a chance for the market to experience a short-term short squeeze driven by expectations, further pushing up prices. It is expected that the prices of A-shares and the Hang Seng Index will be volatile in the coming days or weeks.

In the field of cryptocurrency, as the hype around regulation and ETF applications continues to fade and the market remains unstable, prices continue to slowly decline. However, the SEC-Ripple ruling has led to an interesting development, with recently Altcoins increasing their dominance in terms of trading volume, as traders are now more concerned with the regulatory impact of "security tokens", especiallythe potential beneficiaries (or losers) from the classification of securities (retail investors vs institutions).

In addition, even non-professionals cannot ignore the outstanding performance of DOGE, which has risen by 6.5% in the past 24 hours, while Bitcoin has fallen by 3%. Elon Musk suddenly announced that Twitter and its beloved "bird logo" will retire, to be replaced by a new name "X", which has sparked crazy speculation in the market that Elon's favorite pet token will finally be integrated with the new platform brand in some form.

Finally, Sam Altman's WorldCoin token (made famous by OpenAI) went live yesterday. On the first day of trading, it soared from an opening price of $0.15 to a high of $5.29. The AI competition between Musk and Altman has been well-known for years, and as they gradually reveal more details about their latest projects, the market is highly anticipating whether they will continue to compete in the cryptocurrency field.