UNH - Wall Street Breakfast Podcast: Alibaba Unveils New AI Product

2023-04-11 07:19:01 ET

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Alibaba ( BABA ) unveils new ChatGPT-like service to be integrated across all its products. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) crosses $30,000 to hit 10-month high as investors increasingly bet on Fed pause. South Korea bills Google ( GOOG ) ( GOOGL ) a $32M fine for blocking rival's video games. Learn more about these stocks with Seeking Alpha Premium .

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast.

• Alibaba is stepping into AI. The company revealed a new ChatGPT style product at its summit.

• Bitcoin tops $30,000 for the first time since June 2022.

• And Amazon is starting to make you pay to return. The company is charging fees for UPS-store returns.

OUR TOP STORY

Alibaba has revealed that Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing unit of the Chinese tech giant, will be rolling out its own ChatGPT-style product Tongyi Qianwent.

The company made the announcement at 2023 Alibaba Cloud Summit.

The move is in line with an announcement made earlier this month .

The AI powered technology will have Chinese and English language capabilities.

However, the company did not reveal a timeline.

The CEO of Alibaba Group, Daniel Zhang described this is as a technological watershed moment driven by generative AI and cloud computing, and businesses across all sectors have started to embrace intelligence transformation to stay ahead of the game.

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Bitcoin has hit a level not seen since June of 2022. If you look at the dedicated BTC-USD page on Seeking Alpha you’ll see that Bitcoin is above that $30,000 mark.

According to Coindesk, more than 87% of all BTC future trades liquidated in the past 24 hours were short bets with losses from these trades amounting to ~$145M.

Knox Ridley, Investing Groups leader of 'Tech Insider Network' , said now that bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) has risen nearly 90% from its November low, "we must conclude that this appears to be more than just a bear market bounce."

This is surely a topic that our weekly crypto contributor Mike Fay will talk about on crypto Thursday. Mike Fay is the leader of the Investing Group, BlockChain Reaction on Seeking Alpha.

NOW MORE ON THE MARKET

U.S. stocks on Monday ended largely unchanged.

Investors, of course, are looking ahead to the start of the earnings season and inflation data this week.

The Nasdaq ended 0.03% lower. The S&P 500 closed 0.10% higher, while the Dow settled 0.30% higher.

Of the 11 S&P sectors, five closed in the red, led by Communication Services and Utilities. Industrials and Energy topped the gainers.

Ahan Vashi is the leader of the Investing Group, The Quantamental Investor, he said "Investors are in a wait-and-watch mode until Wednesday's inflation report and Friday's bank earnings. With the year-to-date run-up in equities being driven solely by trading multiple expansion, we could see it fizzle out quickly if we were to get any sort of negative surprises this week. He went on to say that investors should expect more volatility this week and maintain a cautious view on equities in the near term.”

Treasury yields were higher on Monday. The 10-year yield ( US10Y ) was up 4 basis points to 3.42%, while the 2-year yield ( US2Y ) was up 4 basis points to 4.01%.

The economic calendar on Monday was relatively light. Wholesale inventory figures for February came in less than expected at 0.1% M/M compared to the consensus figure of 0.2%. Meanwhile, the New York Fed's March survey of consumer expectations showed an uptick in short-term and medium-term inflation expectations.

MORE OF OUR TOP STORIES

South Korea's antitrust regulator has slapped Alphabet's Google (NASDAQ: GOOG ) ( GOOGL ) with a $31.88M fine for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor's platform.

Between June 2016 and April 2018, Google ( GOOG ) reportedly tried to block Korean platform rival One Store’s business by asking Korea’s major game companies as well as smaller firms and Chinese companies, to exclusively release their new games in Google’s Play Store.

In return Google ( GOOG ) would promote their games and provide further support abroad.

The regulator says the activities hindered One Store’s ability to attract new games and resulted in a drop in sales during the period.

The FTC estimates that Google earned around 1.8T won in sales through this activity.

The Korean regulator has ordered Google entities to stop offering support to mobile game companies in exchange for promises of exclusivity.

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Shipments of traditional PCs around the world fell during the first quarter of 2023 hurt by weak demand, excess inventory, and deteriorating macroeconomic conditions.

According to a report published by International Data Corporation, the Worldwide Quarterly Personal Computing Device Tracker showed that preliminary Q1 global PC shipments fell 29% from last year to 56.9M.

In the near term, IDC expects PC shipments to "likely suffer," and growth is expected after 2023, citing improvement in the global economy and possibly from consumers who are considering upgrading to Windows 11.

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UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH ) has closed a deal to acquire the New York-based physician group Crystal Run Healthcare.

This highlights the rising interest of managed care players toward primary care providers.

Crystal Run operates a network of more than 400 physicians across the Hudson Valley and the lower Catskill region covering nearly 50 medical specialties, including primary care.

The most recent article on United Health was written by Column Research.

The article is entitled UnitedHealth Group: May Seem Overvalued But Significant Upside Still Ahead. In the article they say “The population is rapidly aging and will result in an increased demand for healthcare. AI investment has the potential of greatly reducing costs.”

I’ll leave a link to that article in show notes.

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In IPO News

TypTap Insurance Group, a subsidiary of HCI Group (NYSE: HCI ), has withdrawn its filing for a $100M initial public offering.

The homeowners insurance provider filed for the withdrawal on Friday. TypTap first filed for the IPO in November 2021 indicating it was seeking to raise $100M.

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Cheetah Net Supply Chain Service (CTNT), a supplier of parallel-import luxury cars for the Chinese market, has filed to raise around $12M through a US initial public offering.

Cheetah did not specify terms in its filing. The company said that selling shareholders were considering offering 1.6M shares priced at $5 per share to raise $8M.

The company hopes to list its shares on Nasdaq under the symbol CTNT.

Based in North Carolina, Cheetah supplies cars sourced in the US to dealers in China. The company focuses on luxury brands such as BMW, Bentley, Mercedes, Lexus and Porsche.

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Virgin Orbit (NASDAQ: VORB ) on Monday said it had been informed by the Nasdaq stock market that trading in its common stock and warrants would be suspended on April 13.

The Nasdaq notice comes after the company filed for bankruptcy last week.

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And finally, if you like to return things you bought from Amazon, listen up! A report says Amazon has instituted a new fee for some returns at UPS Stores in order to compensate for return costs.

According to the Information, Amazon has instituted a charge if return options at Whole Foods, Kohl’s or Amazon Fresh locations are closer or just as far as a UPS Store return location.

The charge is aimed at “deterring customers from using UPS when they have lots of other choices, presumably as a way of reducing the cost of returns for Amazon.”

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Now let’s take a look at the markets as of 6:20 am. Ahead of the opening bell today, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the green. The Dow is up 0.2%. The S&P 500 is up 0.3% and the Nasdaq is up 0.4%. Crude oil is flat at nearly $80 a barrel. Bitcoin is up 6% at $30,067.

The FTSE 100 is up 0.4% and the Dax is up 0.8%.

On today’s economic calendar, at 6 am the National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Optimism Index.

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