To rectify "involution" competition, China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) issued the "Compliance Guidelines for Pricing Behavior in the Automotive Industry" to further regulate pricing behavior in the automotive sector.

Regulating automotive industry pricing will promote high-quality development in the industry, meaningfully aiding in brand cultivation and shifting the focus from "price competition" to "quality competition", according to China Passenger Car Association (CPCA) Secretary-General Cui Dongshu, cited by The Paper.

Cui believed that consumers are highly sensitive to car prices in the short term, and "price competition" creates a mindset of "waiting for price cuts". Regulating prices will create a reassuring shopping environment for consumers, helping to alleviate hesitation in car purchases.
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The Chinese internet sector has had a ho-hum start in 2026, with the KWEB remaining flat year-to-date, Bernstein said in a report. AI progress continued to drive relative preferences within the sector, with BABA-W (09988.HK) outperforming due to the launch of AI agent service by its Tongyi Qianwen, while TENCENT (00700.HK) lagged behind.

The broker pointed out that the chatbot battle is pivotal, with China's top-notch internet platforms resorting to “red packet” subsidies to foster robot adoption. This supports the broker’s view that in the consumer-facing AI domain, model capability is only part of the success formula. Compared to the promotion of mobile payment wallets in 2015, the broker viewed that distributing cash to drive “search behavior” is a rather indirect method. It is best to reserve judgment until high-frequency data in the coming weeks reveals user reactions during and after the Spring Festival.

The regulatory temperature in the Chinese industry remains higher than the broker would like, with the broker previously mentioning a “yellow flag warning” in the regulatory cycle of the industry. Since then, Pinduoduo (PDD.US) and TRIP.COM-S (09961.HK) were investigated, and rumors of a VAT increase (though debunked) contributed to shaky sentiment.

On TENCENT, the broker opined that its AI investment returns support growth, but the chatbot business still needs improvement. TENCENT's year-to-date stock performance showed investor concern over AI model and chatbot development. The broker believed the recent “Yuanbao” red packet snafu reflects its internal dual-track AI development model. On the other hand, TENCENT continued to provide robust AI ROI through its advertising and gaming businesses.

In a nutshell, TENCENT's recent valuation downgrade is not without reason. However, the broker also recalled the case of Apple (AAPL.US), of which market cap returns to USD4 trillion, may be like Meta (META.US) that switches between “AI leader” and “AI laggard”. When the broker asked TENCENT's management for clues on resolving narrative headwinds, they stated that Hunyuan 2.0 was the first model launched after the AI development team restructuring, and the model iteration speed should accelerate thereafter.

But if the market's argument is that TENCENT's multiple will remain under pressure until AI model development remains a show-me story, 14-15x FY+1 PE on the broker’s estimates now stands near the lower end of the company’s historical range, and not far from trough levels in 2022-2023 when the sector faced, the broker viewed that top-down headwinds that were much more severe are difficult to ring-fence.
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South Korea's Samsung Electronics started the commercial delivery of the latest version of HBM4 memory chips to an unnamed customer, marking a strategic lead for Samsung in the highly competitive AI memory market.

Prior to this, SK Hynix had been technically leading and monopolizing Nvidia's (NVDA.US) high-bandwidth memory orders. However, in recent months, Samsung has narrowed the gap with SK Hynix.
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This year, February has only 16 working days, and the Spring Festival has a historically long 9-day holiday, meaning there will be three fewer working days compared to the 19 working days in February 2025, said the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

Due to the weaker car consumption before and after the Spring Festival holiday, the CPCA pointed out that most car makers will take additional days off around the Spring Festival. As a result, the effective production and sales time in February is very short, and it is likely that February's car market sales will be at the absolute trough of the year, which may help alleviate inventory pressure at the retail end.
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In January 2026, China's passenger vehicle market recorded retail sales of 1.544 million units, representing a YoY decrease of 13.9%, according to data released by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).

During the period, the production and retail sales of new energy passenger vehicles (NEV-PVs) dropped by 0.6% and 20% YoY to 938,000 and 596,000 units, while the retail sales of conventional fuel passenger vehicles slipped by 10% YoY to 948,000 units.
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China's State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) released the "Compliance Guidelines for Pricing Behavior in the Automotive Industry" to address "involution" competition and further regulate pricing behavior in the automotive sector, promoting healthy and orderly development of the automotive market.

The guidelines primarily include clear compliance requirements for pricing from entire vehicle to component production and from pricing strategies to sales behavior. It implements comprehensive pricing management, strengthens fair pricing constraints, and regulates promotional and pricing behavior, legally combating unfair pricing practices.

Meanwhile, the guidelines focus on the new car sales segment, aiming to regulate prominent issues such as non-compliance with clearly marked prices and false promotions. A risk warning mechanism is established, encouraging platforms to provide dual warnings on business and consumer risks for significantly low pricing behavior.

Furthermore, automotive production and sales companies are encouraged to establish internal price compliance management mechanisms, including six mechanisms: price decision-making, sales contract management, internal supervision, price emergency handling, risk prevention and control, and price compliance training, to achieve comprehensive control over pricing behavior.
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UBS released a report on NVIDIA (NVDA.US). Its stock price has been middling, but supply chain signals remain bullish. The company's management appeared somewhat frustrated by the market's general doubts about its growth and margin sustainability.

However, ahead of the upcoming earnings announcement (the company will release its 4FQ results on February 25), the market sentiment is relatively positive, especially with the upcoming GTC next month.

UBS forecast that NVIDIA's 4FQ revenue (for the quarter ending January) will be approximately USD67.5 billion, about USD2.5 billion higher than the company's guidance. Whether revenue from the Chinese market will rebound remains uncertain, as there is an immense adoption of domestic GPUs in the region.

However, with reference to AMD's performance last quarter, NVIDIA may still record several billion US dollars in revenue from the Chinese market in 4FQ. In terms of KPIs, UBS noted that just in the past earnings season, the forecast for hyperscale capex for 2026 increased by approximately USD145 billion, or about 25%, with current capex growing about 60% YoY.

Based on supply chain research, UBS again raised NVIDIA's earnings forecast. The EPS forecasts for 2026, 2027, and 2028 are USD9.11, USD12.08, and USD12.92, respectively. Given the myriad of debates, the broker doubted the stock will trade for any more than 20x NTM EPS. Therefore, the TP was only slightly raised from USD235 to USD245, with a Buy rating kept.
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Apple (AAPL.US)'s long-prepared Siri upgrade plan has encountered issues during testing in recent weeks, such as occasional failures to process queries correctly or overly slow response times to requests, Bloomberg quoted sources as saying.

It is reported that Apple originally planned to include these new features in the iOS 26.4 operating system update scheduled for release in March.

However, the Company is now planning to spread them out over future versions, meaning some features may be delayed until the iOS 26.5 release in May and iOS 27 in September.
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U.S. bourse was soft on Wednesday, as the U.S. non-farm payrolls added 130,000 in January, well above forecast, with the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropping to 4.3%. The DJIA, which had hit record highs for three straight days, demonstrated a volatile trend, once up by 310 points to peak at 50,499 before closing down 66 points or 0.1% at 50,121. The Nasdaq closed down 36 points or 0.2% at 23,066. The S&P 500 closed nearly flat at 6,941.

Pharmaceutical giant Moderna (MRNA.US) saw its stock price lose by as much as 10%, with the full-day decline narrowing to 3.5%, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration refused to review its experimental flu vaccine mRNA-1010 application.

Among the "Magnificent Seven", Microsoft (MSFT.US) and Alphabet (GOOG.US) both dived over 2%. Nvidia (NVDA.US) inched up 0.8%. Tesla (TSLA.US) and Apple (AAPL.US) each rose 0.7%. Meta (META.US) dipped 0.3%.
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Last month, China's automobile production edged up by 0.01% YoY to 2.45 million units, while automobile sales declined by 3.2% YoY to 2.346 million units, according to the latest data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers (CAAM).

Specifically, the new energy vehicle market remained stable, with production and sales rising by 2.5% and 0.1% YoY to 1.041 million and 945,000 units.

The commercial vehicle market also sustained its positive trend, maintaining double-digit YoY growth in both production and sales.
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