Market sentiment was sluggish through late September, but policy support announced yesterday helped steady the mood. Hong Kong stocks opened lower before climbing, closing up 0.37%.

Talks between the United States and Iran remain deadlocked. Trump said he has not offered Iran any conditions to end the war, denying media reports citing US officials. Meanwhile, tech giants signed a voluntary AI safety agreement and threw support behind data center expansion. Tech stocks stabilized slightly but without much fanfare, as no strongly stimulative news emerged. Cambridge Technology (HKEX: 06166) gained more than 3%. Among software names, Marketingforce (HKEX: 02556) performed well, rising over 6% 鈥?see the stock selection section for details.

Yesterday brought a mortgage rate subsidy policy for property, and this morning ICBC, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China CITIC Bank successively announced they would respond to the new measure with "no-application instant benefit" processing, simplifying procedures to implement the policy quickly. The stimulus is not particularly strong: it is not a new policy, as more than 20 mainland cities already run mortgage interest subsidies, and this move merely upgrades a pilot to a nationwide rollout. It targets first-home buyers in small and mid-tier cities, with the vast majority of properties in first-tier and strong second-tier cities excluded under the qualifying conditions. The benefit amounts to a 50,000 yuan rebate over five years. Based on a 1 million yuan loan, monthly payments fall by 520 yuan, with cumulative interest savings of up to 47,300 yuan. Assuming 1 million beneficiary households, total subsidies over five years would be about 47.3 billion yuan, or roughly 9.5 billion yuan a year 鈥?just 0.03% of annual national fiscal spending. As a result, property stocks opened sharply lower today. Bargain hunters later stepped in to chase a rebound, drawn mainly by the sector's long-term low valuations and some improvement in fundamentals, though expectations remain subdued. Lower-tier cities benefit most: Times China Holdings (HKEX: 01233) surged nearly 28%, while Country Garden (HKEX: 02007) and China Overseas Grand Oceans (HKEX: 00081) rose more than 3%.

With property persistently weak and tech offering little direction, capital rotated back into pharmaceuticals. US vaccine maker Moderna delivered good news: abstracts from three studies of an investigational personalized mRNA neoantigen therapy jointly developed with Merck have been accepted for presentation at the 2026 European Society for Medical Oncology Congress in Madrid from October 23 to 27. CanSino Biologics (HKEX: 06185) 鈥?whose Shanghai unit previously signed a cooperation framework agreement with Dpuxi Biology to jointly develop personalized mRNA cancer vaccines, with CanSino providing mRNA delivery and formulation capabilities and Dpuxi supplying an AI neoantigen discovery and design platform 鈥?soared more than 17% today. Red Queen Bio, a biosecurity startup backed by OpenAI, has raised $36 million to develop antibody drugs against multiple viruses and plans to start first clinical trials in 2027. The global market for AI-enabled drug discovery spending is expected to grow from $11.9 billion in 2023 to $74.6 billion in 2032, a compound growth rate of 22.6%, far outpacing overall R&D spending growth. Several core names performed well: Insilico Medicine (HKEX: 03696), an AI small-molecule drug discovery firm with a dual engine of in-house pipelines and external BD licensing, rose over 8%; Jitai Technology-P (HKEX: 07666), focused on AI nano drug delivery (LNP lipid delivery) and the world's first listed AI delivery platform company, gained more than 11%; Biocytogen-B (HKEX: 02315), whose AI applications cover optimization across small molecules, antibodies, small nucleic acids, mRNA and CAR-T, rising over 8%; and XtalPi Holdings (HKEX: 02228), a full-stack AI4S drug R&D platform covering small molecules, molecular glues, peptides and small nucleic acids with robotic wet labs, up nearly 4%. Hengrui Pharma (HKEX: 01276), which released news yesterday, only rallied today 鈥?a common pattern, since Hong Kong foreign investors are quite cautious, the stock barely moved yesterday, and today with sector sentiment very strong and foreign brokerages turning positive, expectations shifted and capital moved in quickly, driving a gain of more than 10%. Innovative drug names CSPC Pharmaceutical Group (HKEX: 01093), Junshi Biosciences (HKEX: 01877), Hansoh Pharmaceutical (HKEX: 03692) and BeiGene (HKEX: 06160) each rose more than 5%. CXO names are unavoidable: Joinn Laboratories (HKEX: 06127), a leading domestic non-clinical safety evaluation CRO with years of drug safety assessment experience and full NMPA, FDA and OECD GLP credentials, offering one-stop preclinical and early clinical new drug evaluation services from early discovery and pharmacology-toxicology testing to clinical sample testing, with notable advantages in non-human primate testing, jumped more than 15% today. Other integrated CXO players WuXi AppTec (HKEX: 02359) and Pharmaron (HKEX: 03759), CDMO names Asymchem (HKEX: 06821) and WuXi Biologics (HKEX: 02269), and clinical CRO Tigermed (HKEX: 03347) all gained more than 3%. Recent listing Shenyan Intelligent (HKEX: 02723) also stood out, planning a 1-for-10 share split that would cut the value of each board lot from 43,840 yuan to 4,384 yuan, aiming to lower the investment threshold and improve liquidity and trading efficiency; it surged 20% today. Jinxin Fertility (HKEX: 01951) announced last night a plan to issue asset-backed securities 鈥?inter-institutional REITs 鈥?for its Shenzhen hospital property, which has been formally accepted by the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Simply put, it securitizes the Shenzhen Zhongshan Hospital property assets, unlocking heavy existing assets and bringing in about 1.2 billion yuan in net cash, significantly cutting leverage with net debt/EBITDA falling from 2.8x to 0.9x. The funds will prioritize debt repayment, lowering interest expenses, thickening the financial safety cushion, easing financing cost pressure and improving the balance sheet. The plan still needs SSE approval and a shareholder meeting vote; the stock rose more than 6% today. Dajin Heavy Industry (HKEX: 01081), mentioned in yesterday's stock selection, performed again. The company recently signed a design contract with renowned Norwegian ship design firm Ulstein for a new-generation ULSTEIN HX122 with U-STERN offshore foundation installation vessel. This marks Dajin's formal entry into the offshore wind installation segment. Separately, on September 27, KINGTHREE 鈥?the third large deck transport vessel in the self-designed, fully self-built KING series 鈥?was officially delivered at Dajin's Panjin base, signaling the full completion of the KING series owned ocean-going fleet. The stock rose nearly 8% again today.

Sector Focus

Sinolink Securities said National Day holiday airfare presales rose 11.5% year on year. According to DAST data, for the 2026 National Day holiday (October 1-7), the weighted average domestic economy-class tax-inclusive fare was 959.6 yuan, up 11.5% from 860.4 yuan in the same period of 2025; the average bare fare was 848.8 yuan, up 6.4% year on year. This week, domestic tax-inclusive fares and unit revenue rose 2.2% and 2.5% week on week respectively, with a load factor of 87.8%. In air cargo, the latest September 21 Baltic air freight index rose 0.9% week on week and 20.9% year on year, while the Pudong and Hong Kong outbound indices rose 0.6% and 0.3% week on week and 19.7% and 19.6% year on year respectively. The brokerage believes air cargo rates are maintaining relatively high year-on-year growth with resilient prosperity, while on the passenger side attention should focus on National Day volume and price realization. Key names: Air China (HKEX: 00753), China Eastern Airlines (HKEX: 00670), China Southern Airlines (HKEX: 01055) and Cathay Pacific (HKEX: 00293).

Stock Selection

Marketingforce (HKEX: 02556): Major land purchase for R&D center; overseas expansion adds growth. Plot 83-02E in the North Hongqiao area of Jiangqiao Town, Jiading District, was won on September 30 by Marketingforce (Shanghai) Intelligent Technology Co, with a site area of 9,093.85 square meters and total investment of about 250 million yuan to build an AI research and development center, expected to be completed and put into operation by September 2029 with annual sales revenue of about 5 billion yuan at full capacity. Commentary: Making such a large land purchase for an R&D center at this stage highlights the company's strong confidence in future development. Marketingforce continues to raise funds to expand computing infrastructure, and Token voucher subsidies in some cities are expected to further shorten the investment payback period. Token-related revenue as a share of AI application revenue keeps rising; in the second half, AI R&D agents will begin external sales, and overseas business expansion is expected to contribute incremental growth. Marketingforce is accelerating the rollout of foreign trade AI agents, with profit growth standing out. Its full-year 2025 overseas foreign trade revenue was 75.934 million yuan, up 134.4% year on year, far outpacing domestic business growth. In the first half of 2026, overseas revenue rose 89% year on year, with 982 overseas paying customers. The company's AI business is booming in 2026, with AI accounting for more than half; in Q1 2026 AI revenue rose 110.5% year on year while traditional marketing grew 0.9%, and precision marketing services revenue reached about 1.331 billion yuan, up nearly 86% year on year, providing enterprises with more flexible online promotion solutions in advertising placement and marketing data analysis. Its core AI-Agentforce 3.0 middle platform plus self-developed GEO large model 鈥?a self-developed multi-model fusion framework 鈥?can orchestrate its own Tforce and large models from Baidu and Alibaba, optimizing cost and controlling results. It has accumulated over a thousand reusable knowledge graphs and served more than 210,000 enterprises cumulatively. Its core partners include Baidu and Alibaba Cloud's general large models and cloud computing foundations. Together with MetaX (domestic GPU), it is building a "domestic chip plus intelligent agent" all-in-one machine adapted to the xinchuang ecosystem, cutting costs and improving security. With Beilian Guoxin and OceanBase (Ant Group) it covers xinchuang servers and databases for self-controllability. Globalization is accelerating, with 2026 focused on Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Europe, serving local enterprises directly and lifting the overseas revenue share. AI all-in-one machines, GEO intelligent assistants and vertical industry agents continue to iterate, building a "token factory" priced by output value. With computing self-sufficiency above 60%, it has become one of the few domestic AI application leaders with self-sufficient computing power. The token factory model is mature, charging by usage or effect, improving revenue certainty and gross margin significantly. Its number of KA customers has doubled, AI Agent penetration is rising, overseas expansion is accelerating, and the share of effect-based payment (with higher gross margin) is increasing. Localized computing deployment overseas (Southeast Asia and the Middle East) opens a second growth curve. Its AI agent orders are landing in batches, with ample long-term framework orders in consumer, automotive and financial industries, very high renewal rates and a rapidly rising share of AI orders. The company's AI application revenue has doubled, with the token economy model and overseas expansion bringing long-term growth opportunities.