大仁Jaron

(China Science and Technology Daily) August 31 — Apple, which once fell behind in the development pace of the artificial intelligence field, may soon turn things around by “changing the top executive.”
On September 1 local time, Apple’s current Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, John Ternus, will succeed Tim Cook as the company’s new CEO. Cook will move on to become Executive Chairman of the Board and will continue to handle matters such as communicating with global policy makers.
Meanwhile, Apple’s fall product launch event has been scheduled for September 9. At that time, as the newly appointed CEO, Ternus will for the first time be responsible for presiding over the event.

The recent pullback in tech stocks is not the end of the AI narrative, but the market is undergoing a profound restructuring of its pricing logic.
Nvidia once saw seven straight trading days of declines, weighing on the Nasdaq. Rich Privorotsky, head of the Goldman One-Delta trading desk, said this round of selling in tech stocks is hard to attribute to a single catalyst; rather, it is the combined result of triple pressures—credit market conditions, supply-chain expectations, and the policy environment. He warned that “the credit market is raising questions that the stock market had largely overlooked.”
This repricing has already left clear marks at the valuation level. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index’s 24-month forward P/E has narrowed from 21–22 times to roughly 15 times, and the range of possible outcomes is widening significantly. The core issue has also shifted—from “what AI can do” to “who will pay for it to run.”

Bessent launches an all-out economic offensive against Iran; AI devours global high-end storage output, and on the eve of Nvidia's earnings report, its own supply chain becomes the frontline of national security.
1｜Bessent launches "Operation Economic Abandonment"; the final arguments of Iran's moderates are dismantled
Bessent formally announced on Monday the secondary sanctions code-named "Operation Economic Abandonment". The measures cover five areas—digital assets, technology, gold, aviation, and shipping—adding nearly 60 individuals, entities, and vessels. Before the sanctions were published, the rial had already fallen below 2 million per 1 US dollar, a historic low. The Washington Post's assessment is that the heaviest move was actually delayed.

Billionaire and founder of Bridgewater Associates Ray Dalio issues a warning: the U.S. debt crisis could break out as soon as within three years, and he advises investors to reduce their bond holdings—allocating 10% to 15% of their portfolio to gold—while holding a small amount of Bitcoin to hedge risk.
In an article published on Friday, Dalio said that this year the U.S. government’s revenue is about $5.5 trillion, while spending is as high as $7.5 trillion, leaving a gap of $2 trillion. Even just interest expenses alone would come close to $1 trillion, and roughly $10 trillion in debt urgently needs to be refinanced.
He believes that if the current trajectory is not changed, the debt crisis—"within three years, with an error range of plus or minus two years"—may arrive. The remarks have once again stirred market sentiment.

Meta Platforms has become one of Microsoft’s largest AI (artificial intelligence) customers, highlighting that demand for this emerging AI technology remains largely concentrated in the technology industry for now.
An insider said Meta spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year to access AI models through Microsoft Azure cloud services. It added that the compute power Meta uses each week via Azure has reached the level of tens of trillions of tokens.
An important part of Microsoft’s AI strategy is to provide AI models from different vendors through a model marketplace called Foundry. As of this past July, Foundry had 100,000 customers. In promotional materials, Microsoft often showcases customers from traditional industries such as manufacturing and transportation.

Bank of America’s latest global fund manager survey shows that 56% of the funds in respondents’ investment portfolios are allocated to stocks—its highest level since November 2021.
However, this survey also shows that as investors' optimism toward stocks continues to build, “unruly bond yield increases” is seen as the second-largest factor threatening the stock market, only behind the risk of an AI bubble.
In addition, as a related risk factor, 25% of respondents say that a second-round rebound in inflation is the biggest risk facing the market.
Sevens Report Technicals newsletter editor Tyler Richey says that the surge in bond yields is “the elephant in the room” and could break the rally trend in the stock market that has been edging closer to historic highs over the past year. However, although strategists on Wall Street are paying attention to the impact of rising yields, most of them believe that the current level of yields is not yet high enough to disrupt the logic behind the stock market’s advance. After all, historical data shows that a sudden spike in bond yields does not necessarily deal a blow to the stock market.