The rally in AI stocks may not be over yet, but the coming weeks could bring additional pressure on recently underperforming shares.

A team of strategists at Evercore ISI led by Julian Emanuel said factors that would end the bull market have yet to come. However, seasonal tax considerations combined with potential IPOs by OpenAI and Anthropic could squeeze some stocks.

The Evercore team noted that the market may be inclined to view a June listing by SpaceX as marking the peak of the technology boom, similar to how the AOL-Time Warner merger in January 2001 was seen as a signal of the dot-com bubble peak. However, the firm believed a SpaceX IPO would be more comparable to Netscape's 1995 listing, when the internet was at a stage similar to AI today.

Stocks on Evercore's screened list ranked by market cap include Tesla (TSLA.US), IBM (IBM.US), American Express (AXP.US), McDonald’s (MCD.US), S&P Global (SPGI.US), Lowe’s (LOW.US), AppLovin (APP.US), HCA Healthcare (HCA.US), Boston Scientific (BSX.US), Medline (MDLN.US), Rocket Cos (RKT.US), Martin Marietta Materials(MLM.US), Zoetis(ZTS.US), Las Vegas Sands(LVS.US), Fiserv(FISV.US), Coupang(CPNG.US), Otis Worldwide(OTIS.US), NRG Energy(NRG.US), AST SpaceMobile(ASTS.US), Markel(MKL.US), First Solar(FSLR.US), Fidelity National Information Services(FIS.US), Equifax(EFX.US), Lennar(LEN.US), Fair Isaac Group(FICO.US), FedEx Freight(FDXF.US), Tyson Foods(TSN.US), Flutter Entertainment(FLUT.US), Rollins(ROL.US), The Carlyle Group(CG.US), Somnigroup International(SGI.US), RB Global(RBA.US), Talen Energy(TLN.US), Albemarle(ALB.US), McCormick & Co. (MKC.US), QXO (QXO.US), Lennox International (LII.US), Dick’s Sporting Goods (DKS.US), Fidelity National Financial (FNF.US) and DraftKings (DKNG.US).
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) will hold a product launch event on Wednesday (9th) U.S. time. The market expects the company's new CEO John Ternus may unveil the iPhone 18 Pro, Pro Max and the highly anticipated foldable iPhone, reportedly named iPhone Ultra.

The upcoming iPhone 18 Pro will be available in deep cherry color, with new light blue and dark gray options added, according to a Macworld report.

Industry estimates suggested the foldable iPhone will have a starting price of about USD2,000, while higher-storage versions could rise to USD3,000. The current iPhone 17 base model is priced at USD799.

The cheaper iPhone 18 and 18 Air models will not debut at this launch event, report said. The iPhone 17 and 17 Air will continue to be sold until their successor models are launched in early 2027. Updates to Apple Watch and AirPods are also anticipated.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

Markets were laser-focused on the US August CPI data due this week and developments in the situations involving Iran and Ukraine. Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) was anticipated to hold its autumn launch event on September 9, US time, with the iPhone 18 likely to debut on the same day.

Major European bourses traded narrowly mixed in early Monday trading. The pan-European STOXX 600 dipped 0.1% to 649.32. The UK's FTSE 100 lost 3 points, or 0.3%, to 10,827. France's CAC added 5 points, or 0.06%, to 8,284. Germany's DAX faded 83 points, or 0.3%, to 25,963. Italy's FTSE MIB hiked 25 points, or 0.5%, to 52,126. Spain's IBEX 35 lowered 40 points, or 0.2%, to 20,010.

Jaguar Land Rover, a unit of India's Tata Motors, announced a voluntary redundancy scheme for thousands of employees in the UK. The company reportedly plans to cut up to 4,000 jobs over the next two years. When queried by CNBC about the scale of the job cuts, a Jaguar spokesperson declined to comment.

However, the spokesperson confirmed that the company has informed unions and employees about the launch of the voluntary redundancy scheme, offering the option to both general staff and management employees. The company aims to save GBP1.7 billion over the next two years and lower its break-even point to 300,000 vehicles. Tata Motors Passenger Vehicles fell 1.3% in late trading in India.

US and Canadian markets are closed today for the Labor Day holiday.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

According to Australian data center operator AirTrunk Operating Pty Ltd., US tech giants are attracted by Australia's green power grid and proximity to Asia, while also facing growing backlash in the US domestic market, Bloomberg reported.

AirTrunk Vice President of Energy and Utilities Sabooh Whitelaw said that companies including Google, Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), Meta Platforms, Inc. (META.US), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US) and Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) have shown stronger-than-expected interest in Australia over the past six to eight months.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

CATHAY PAC AIR (00293.HK) and Google announced a partnership to advance research on contrails and their contribution to aviation’s climate impact.

Cathay Pacific is Google’s first commercial airline partner in Asia-Pacific to trial its AI-powered contrail mitigation technology, and the first airline globally to test contrail avoidance on ultra-long-haul flights.

The companies have started trials to evaluate the operational feasibility and constraints of contrail avoidance across Cathay Pacific’s extensive global network. The trials will contribute valuable new data to global contrail research and advance understanding of contrail formation and avoidance in the Asia-Pacific region, a geography that has been underrepresented in previous trials.

An operational trial began in late 2025, with more than 100 flights targeted across Cathay Pacific's network. Over 80 flights followed contrail-avoidance routes, and Google estimates that these flights achieved roughly 40% reduction in the warming impact of contrails.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

LI AUTO-W (02015.HK) announced progress on the rollout of its in-house batteries across its full vehicle lineup. LI AUTO-W began the in-house development of its Mach chips in 2022 and will continue investing to advance chip iterations.

The development of the in-house Mach chip does not change the fact that NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) remains a world-leading chip brand; similarly, the development of in-house batteries does not affect CATL (03750.HK) being a leading battery brand, LI AUTO-W said.

In the era of embodied intelligent vehicles, batteries and chips are the most critical technology barriers, while electric powertrain technologies, intelligent driving models and strong product capabilities will become the company's core competitiveness.

LI AUTO-W hopes to follow top enterprises such as Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), Huawei and Tesla, Inc. (TSLA.US) in keeping future-oriented core technology barriers in its own hands, which the company described as its strategic focus.

As orders for the new-generation Li MEGA in recent days exceeded the company's expectations, CATL's reserve of 5C ternary lithium batteries is expected to be depleted soon. Users locking in orders from 3 p.m. on September 7 onward will switch to LI AUTO-W's in-house developed 5C ternary lithium batteries, with deliveries expected to begin in November.

LI AUTO-W will launch the 2026 Li i6 in 4Q26, equipped with the company's in-house developed 5C batteries and in-house developed Mach chips. User reservations will open by the end of September, with deliveries to commence in early November.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

Tesla China announced that customers who place orders and take delivery of available inventory vehicles from now until September 30 can enjoy cash incentives of RMB5,000 for all Model 3 variants, including the Performance version, and RMB10,000 for all Model Y variants, including Model Y L.

In addition, Tesla's lower-priced version of the Model 3 has been launched in Hong Kong and Macau, with a starting price of less than RMB180,000.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

NEW ORIENTAL-S (09901.HK) Chairman Yu Minhong said there are probably only two types of products in the world. One type is products that are created and can touch people's hearts, such as the iPhone created by Steve Jobs. When HUAWEI, XIAOMI-W (01810.HK) and others started making smartphones, Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) had already pioneered the smartphone market, and smartphones are now a mature product.

For mature products, there is only one possibility, which is to make them better than competitors rather than cheaper, he opined. Based on nearly 40 years of business practice, he found that selling cheap products and engaging in price wars can never deliver long-term growth prospects.

The second type is making products remarkably better than competitors, he added. Citing NEW ORIENTAL-S' practice in the food industry, he said there is only one type of product in the food industry: products that are safer than competitors' offerings, with customers clearly recognizing the superior safety standards. In addition, the food must taste better than competitors' products.

In his view, because China's food supply exceeds demand, companies can only operate with an ultimate pursuit of excellence under such circumstances. Therefore, he established a rule for EAST BUY to create only products with "three highs": high safety, high quality and high cost-performance.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

HORIZONROBOT-W (09660.HK) founder and CEO Yu Kai recently said the company endeavors to become the market share leader in China's autonomous driving chip market next year, toppling NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US).

Technological innovation is endless, and the logic of the intelligent driving chip industry is starkly different from that of the luxury goods industry, he noted. There is no permanent technological advantage, and continuous iteration is required to move forward.

In the future, the company will continue to ramp up investment in autonomous driving chip technology R&D, striving to gain a dominant position in China's high-end intelligent driving chip market through product iteration and further expand the industry influence of domestically developed intelligent driving chips.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com

LENOVO GROUP (00992.HK) recently held Lenovo Innovation World 2026. Luca Rossi, Executive Vice President of the Group, said AI is changing the relationship between people and technology.

The group is demonstrating how hybrid AI can make this transformation a reality by integrating AI across devices, edge and cloud, enabling it to operate in the right place at the right time.

Through Lenovo and Motorola's new product portfolio, the company is laying the foundation for personal AI that can move with users, while also helping enterprises deploy AI where data resides.

The Lenovo Yoga Pro 9n laptop launched by Lenovo deeply integrates with the edge AI architecture ecosystem of NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) and is equipped with NVIDIA RTX Spark.

The chip combines a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU with an NVIDIA Blackwell RTX GPU featuring 6,144 CUDA cores through NVLink-C2C interconnect technology, delivering 1 PFLOPS of AI performance and supporting up to 128GB unified memory.

Large models with more than 100 billion parameters can run locally on a single laptop. NVIDIA cited a reference model featuring 120 billion parameters and a context window of 1 million tokens for large models.
~

AASTOCKS Financial News
Website: www.aastocks.com