Industrial: What are the industries currently performing well at low levels?
01/04/2025
GMT Eight
Industrial4
(1) In the AI industry chain, priority should be given to the upstream hardware with performance certainty
The overcrowding in most directions of the AI industry chain has been greatly alleviated, but in the more performance-focused April, it is still important to find directions with strong internal performance certainty and cost-effectiveness. The AI sector itself is a huge industry chain covering upstream computing power hardware, midstream software services, and downstream applications. After the previous adjustment, the overcrowding in most directions has been reduced to a low level. In April, which is more focused on performance, it is worth actively paying attention to and laying out directions that are relatively low and supported by performance.
Considering the changes in profit expectations since the beginning of the year, the directions in the AI industry chain that are expected to improve performance are mainly concentrated in the upstream hardware sector, while some sub-segments of the midstream and downstream software applications sectors are also expected to improve, including:
Upstream computing power hardware: optical modules, PCBs, liquid-cooled servers, GPUs, fiber optic cables.
Midstream and downstream software applications: financial technology, drones (low-altitude), autonomous driving.
From the perspective of the matching of stock price and performance, most industries have not seen a significant cumulative increase since the beginning of the year, and some have been at the forefront of the improvement in profit expectations, and are expected to benefit from the improvement in performance certainty.
(2) Focus on the cyclically favorable directions with low positions and leading improvement in profit expectations
By screening the changes in profit expectations of various industries since the beginning of the year, the directions with potential for performance improvement are mainly concentrated in some consumer, financial, infrastructure, and export chains, including:
Home appliances (white goods, kitchen appliances), automobiles, consumer electronics, benefiting from the policy of replacing old with new and expanding consumer subsidies;
Banks and insurance companies benefiting from the "good start" effect at the beginning of the year;
Infrastructure chains (cement, etc.) benefiting from fiscal efforts and debt-to-equity swaps;
Seasoning products benefiting from the peak season effect of the Spring Festival;
Export chains (motorcycles, white goods, etc.) benefiting from "grabbing exports";
In addition, there are securities firms (increased market trading activity) and precious metals (rising gold prices).
From the perspective of the matching of stock price and performance, select the low-position high-performance directions, mainly including consumer goods (white goods, seasonings, professional chains), financial services (securities, state-owned banks, insurance), infrastructure and real estate chains (cement, real estate services), TMT (digital media, advertising, communication equipment), etc.
Risk Warning
Fluctuations in economic data, policy easing lower than expected, Federal Reserve interest rate cuts not meeting expectations, etc.