The market seized a rare opportunity to rebound quickly amid a temporary lull in Middle East tensions. With no new sudden developments emerging from the region, investors focused on the present moment, as future uncertainties remain high. Japan's Nikkei 225 index hit a new intraday record high. Hong Kong stocks jumped 1.72% today, buoyed by the improved sentiment.

U.S. President Trump announced that leaders from Israel and Lebanon will hold talks on Thursday. He also stated it is "highly likely" the U.S. will reach an agreement with Iran before King Charles III's visit in late April, calling the current probability of a deal "very high." Hostilities in Israel have paused, leading to a rare silence in the region. A potential agreement appears closer, as Iran may concede on the core U.S. demand regarding uranium enrichment in exchange for sanctions relief and the reopening of the strait—a favorable trade for Tehran, though reparations are off the table. A temporary ceasefire is possible, but this could create political difficulties for Israel's Netanyahu, who may face legal challenges if hostilities cease. Basing investments on speculation carries significant risk, given the rapidly changing situation. Capital is therefore focused on immediate conditions.

On April 15, Alibaba Cloud announced a 50% price increase for its DDoS High Defense (Mainland China) elastic 95 service effective July 15, marking its third price adjustment within a month. Baidu Intelligent Cloud also raised prices for AI-related products by up to 30%, with new rates taking effect April 18. Anthropic has quietly increased prices for its enterprise products, shifting from fixed fees to usage-based billing. Tencent Cloud will raise list prices for AI computing power, container services, and EMR-related products by 5% starting May 9. After substantial upfront investments, major players are now entering a harvest phase, making price hikes inevitable.

"Token pioneer" Xunce (03317) rebounded over 10% after a two-day adjustment. TIME INTERCON (01729) rose over 9%. KINGSOFT CLOUD (03896) gained over 6%. DEEPEXI TECH (01384) reported 2025 revenue of 4.15 billion yuan, up 70.8% year-on-year. Its FastAGI enterprise AI solution revenue surged 181.5% to 2.54 billion yuan, accounting for 61.3% of total revenue and becoming its primary business pillar. The number of clients grew from 20 in 2024 to 70 in 2025, accelerating commercial deployment. The stock soared over 29%. MARKETINGFORCE (02556) reported a 110% year-on-year increase in Q1 AI application revenue, with GEO emerging as a key implementation of "scene tokens." In the AI search era, companies are competing for "recommendation rights" within answers. Those that enhance a brand's probability of being "seen, understood, trusted, and recommended" by AI can transform model token consumption into high-value "scene token" revenue. The company's proprietary Tforce marketing model accurately maps brand information to the core weights of AI models, ensuring brand dominance during user deep reasoning queries. Experimental data shows brands serviced by MARKETINGFORCE achieve an 89% TOP3 placement rate on major AI platforms, with semantic matching accuracy reaching 99.92%. The stock climbed over 10%.

Chip giant TSMC's Q1 2026 results showed net profit reaching NT$572.5 billion, up 58% year-on-year, with revenue of NT$11.34 trillion, a 35% increase. Gross margin soared to 66.2%. The company forecasts 2026 sales in U.S. dollars to grow over 30%, indicating robust industry vitality. Related chip stocks, including Montage Technology (06809), Novosense (02676), and GigaDevice (03986), all rose over 9%.

A capacity expansion wave among Chinese PCB manufacturers is imminent. While only Shengyi Technology expanded capacity in 2025, other manufacturers announcing expansion plans in July-August 2025 will commence them in September-October 2026. Besides Shengyi, companies like Jingwang Electronic, Avary Holding, Shengyi Electronics, Dongshan Precision, Founder Technology, and Guanghe Technology all announced expansions in 2025. HANS CNC (03200) is a major beneficiary, with management expecting AI business revenue share to rise from about 30% in 2025 to approximately 60% in 2026 (20% from Shengyi Technology, 40% from others). The stock surged over 11% today; Guanghe Technology (01989) gained over 9%.

The expansion of AI hinges on electricity supply. North America's power shortage has brought gas turbines to the forefront, with U.S. leader GE Vernova (GEV) hitting a record high. Orders for the top three global giants are backlogged beyond 2028. Facing capacity bottlenecks, buyers are turning to China. Dongfang Electric (01072) rose over 9%.

Lithium battery giant CATL (03750) also delivered strong performance, with 2025 annual net profit of 72.2 billion yuan. According to an earnings call, about one-third of revenue came from overseas. Q1 results exceeded expectations, with revenue of 129.131 billion yuan, up 52.45% year-on-year, marking the third consecutive quarter of revenue exceeding one trillion yuan. This equates to a daily net profit of 230 million yuan in Q1. Maintaining over 50% growth within a trillion-yuan revenue bracket is remarkable, explaining strong institutional interest. The stock jumped 9% today. The overall lithium battery sector is improving. On the evening of April 15, Ronbay Technology (688005.SH) announced a major plan to invest approximately 4.298 billion yuan in building LFP precursor and cathode material capacity, signaling strong confidence in the outlook. Longpan Technology (02465) issued a Q1 forecast with revenue between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion yuan, up 107.25% to 126.09% year-on-year. Net profit attributable to shareholders is estimated at 200 million to 250 million yuan, a massive increase of 870.75% to 1063.44%, achieving a turnaround and potentially setting a record for Q1 profitability. The stock surged nearly 23%; Ganfeng Lithium (01772) and Tianqi Lithium (09696) both rose over 6%.

Evergrande Property (06666) disclosed that its liquidators were informed that China Evergrande Group and CEG Holdings signed an exclusivity agreement with a selected bidder. The potential seller and buyer agreed to a 30-working-day exclusivity period for negotiations. As of the announcement, the potential sellers collectively hold about 51.02% of Evergrande Property shares. Guangdong Tourism Group is considered the most likely buyer. The prospect of a takeover is positive, pushing Evergrande Property up nearly 12%.

On April 16, the National Bureau of Statistics released March data on commercial residential sales prices in 70 large and medium-sized cities, sending a clear positive signal. For the first time, prices in all four first-tier cities rebounded collectively, breaking the previous downward trend and marking a core indicator of gradual stabilization and recovery in the national property market. Specifically, new home prices in first-tier cities rose 0.2% month-on-month, the first increase since May 2025. Shanghai and Guangzhou led with 0.3% gains. The secondary market saw a more significant turnaround, with prices rising 0.4% month-on-month, ending an 11-month consecutive decline. All four first-tier cities saw increases, a landmark signal of market shift. Beijing led with a 0.6% rise, followed by Shanghai and Shenzhen at 0.4%. Property stocks often lead the market. Key Hong Kong listings include China Resources Land (01109), Longfor Group (00960), and China Overseas Land & Investment (00688). For property agencies, see KE Holdings (02423).

KINGSOFT CLOUD (03896) continues to benefit from industry-wide price increases, with its intelligent computing cloud business experiencing explosive growth. Global AI computing demand is expected to surge 120% year-on-year by 2026, with high-end GPU (H100/H200) delivery cycles still at 6-9 months. The company reported 2025 full-year revenue of 9.557 billion yuan (+22.8%); Q4 revenue was 2.76 billion yuan (+23.7%). After adjustments in Q3 and Q4 2025, it returned to profitability, with a gross margin of 17.1%. Analysis: The company's profitability hit a record high, driven by explosive growth in its intelligent computing cloud business. AI public cloud accounts for nearly 40% of revenue, with training/inference computing power directly competing with Alibaba/Baidu. It implemented synchronized price increases of 5%-30%. Industry cloud revenue reached 860 million yuan (+18.4%). Q4 2025 intelligent computing cloud billings were 930 million yuan (+95%), accounting for 49% of public cloud revenue. AI-related revenue exceeded 30% of total 2025 revenue. It holds the top market share in government cloud (approx. 18%), covering 15 provinces and over 200 districts/counties, with stable Xinchuang orders. In gaming/video cloud, it supports 80% of live streaming traffic for Bilibili and Kuaishou, maintaining early-mover advantage and strong client stickiness. Strategic collaboration within the Xiaomi-Kingsoft ecosystem continues to deepen, with ecosystem revenue reaching 691 million yuan, up 83.8% year-on-year. In Q3 2025, the company achieved an adjusted operating profit of 1.5 million yuan and an adjusted net profit of 2.9 million yuan, marking its first quarterly adjusted profit. Additionally, the company completed a new share placement on October 2, 2025, issuing 338 million shares at HK$8.29 per share, raising approximately HK$2.76 billion net, with 80% allocated to support AI business, including infrastructure expansion and cloud service capability enhancement. Technologically, its Starstream Platform has completed a strategic upgrade from a resource management platform to a full-process AI training and inference platform, achieving a closed loop from heterogeneous resource scheduling and training task fault self-recovery to robotics industry application support and model API service commercialization. The platform now supports nearly 40 different models, including Xiaomi MiMo, DeepSeek, Qwen3, and Kimi. Continued industry price hikes serve as a catalyst for further profitability improvement.