Financial analysts at HSBC, the largest bank in Europe, have become very excited this week about NVIDIA's stock prospects. They have established that the American multinational technology company is set to grow due to an increased demand globally for hardware relating to artificial intelligence (AI) processing. HSBC's team of analysts have raised the recommendation on Nvidia stock (NASDAQ:NVDA) to "Buy" from "Reduce" - the reason being that AI business segments are on the rise and NVIDIA is well positioned to meet demand which: "more than offsets our previous concerns over a datacenter slowdown and rising inventory levels."

HSBC's price target on NVIDIA stock has more than doubled to $355 per share (from the previous $175), and the analysts claim that their past estimates were wrong and undervalued because of wider market trends in the server business: "We were too focused on the slowdown in datacenters, but what really surprised us was its pricing power on AI chips." Hence the analysts' call to double the NVIDIA stock target, in anticipation of excellent fiscal performance going into 2024. News reports point out an immediate 4.1% jump in stock following HSBC's recommendations. The chipmaker's shares have surged up to 140%, its highest position in a year, from a low period in October 2022.

AMD's next-generation Radeon RX 7900 high-end graphics cards are set to arrive next week and bring the new RDNA3 GPU architecture to the masses. However, it seems like the customers will have to fight for their purchase as the availability could be scarce at launch, leading to potentially increased prices with low stocks. According to Igor's Lab report, Germany will receive only 3,000 reference MBA (Made By AMD) units of Radeon RX 7900 series cards. In contrast, the rest of the EMEA region will receive only 7,000 MBA units. These numbers are lower than expected, so AIB partners may improve the supply once their designs hit shelves.

On the other hand, mainland China will not receive any MBA units of the new cards as a sign of increasing tension with Taiwan. Of course, AMD's board partners will supply their designs to China, and they are allowed to; however, it seems that only AMD is making a statement here. In addition to supply issues, the launch is rumored to be covered in BIOS issues such as memory leaks and the COVID-19 outbreak affecting production in closed factories. Of course, all of this information should be taken with a grain of salt, and we must wait for the official launch before making any further assumptions.

EVGA on Thursday announced that it has fresh stocks of its GeForce RTX 30-series "Ampere" graphics cards for direct sales through its website. The best part? Most popular SKUs are in stock, and at prices one could consider "sane," given the scourge of scalping. As of this writing, we see stocks of the company's custom-design RTX 3090 Ti priced as low as USD $1,999, the RTX 3090 as low as $1,699, the RTX 3080 Ti as low as $1,299, the RTX 3080 12 GB as low as $1,199, and the original RTX 3080 well under the $1,000-mark. Those interested can check out the EVGA website. Be sure not to trip its bot-protection using shopping tools.

Intel's announcement today that their 7 nm node is facing difficulties is being taken one of two ways: as an unmitigated disaster by some, and with a tentative carefulness (lest we see another 10 nm repeat) from others. However one looks at this setback, which means AMD will still enjoy a process lead over Intel for some extra time, this is good news for AMD in more ways than just that one.

Case in point: stock price. While AMD has a much lower market cap than Intel (calculated by multiplying the value of a single stock by the number of total issued stocks), today, for the first time since 2006, AMD's shares were more valuable than Intel's on a per-share basis. AMD's $70 billion market cap still pales in comparison to Intel's $215 billion. At time of writing, AMD's stock pricing is $18 higher than Intel, at $68.67 compared to Intel's $50.79. A first in many years for the green company.

NVIDIA's embargo on their Turing-based RTX 2080 and RTX 2080 Ti ended Wednesday, September 19 and it appears that enthusiasts were not the only ones left wanting more from these graphics cards. In particular, Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore shared a note today (Thursday, September 20) with company clients saying "As review embargos broke for the new gaming products, performance improvements in older games is not the leap we had initially hoped for. Performance boost on older games that do not incorporate advanced features is somewhat below our initial expectations, and review recommendations are mixed given higher price points." The NVIDIA Corporation share value on the NASDAQ exchange had closed at $271.98 (USD) Wednesday and immediately tumbled down to a low of $264.10 opening today before recovering to close at $266.28, down 2.1% over the previous closure.

The Morgan Stanley report further mentioned that "We are surprised that the 2080 is only slightly better than the 1080ti, which has been available for over a year and is slightly less expensive. With higher clock speeds, higher core count, and 40% higher memory bandwidth, we had expected a bigger boost." Accordingly, the market analyst expects a slower adoption of these new GPUs as well as no expectation of "much upside" from NVIDIA's gaming business unit for the next two quarters. Despite all this, Morgan Stanley remains bullish on NVIDIA and expects a $273 price point in the long term.

Even as we achieve consumerism in scales hitherto unseen, tech companies always want to sell more - there's "always" increased production, there must always be increased, projected demand from customers. However, when demand isn't there, and growth slows down or even stagnates, production takes its time to adjust - and already manufactured products have few opportunities other than going on towards a swelling inventory.

This is what is happening with a myriad of tech companies, such as Apple, Samsung, Xiaomi, Intel, Hon Hai (Foxconn), among others. We could even take a page from our own PC industry and look at NVIDIA's Pascal inventory that is in need of clearing up - and which has resulted in bottoming prices of previous-gen cards as we look towards the new RTX 20-series. Which, coincidentally, have been launched with increased pricing over the previous generation. Perhaps another way of moving old inventory?

You could see more "Made in Taiwan" and lesser "Made in China" on the shelves of your friendly neighborhood Microcenter, as major Taiwanese original device manufacturers (ODMs) are considering moving manufacturing back from Mainland China to Taiwan. ODMs are contract manufacturers of PC hardware, which take designs from [mostly western] electronics companies, and turn them into marketable product.

Among the first such ODMs is Quanta Computer, which manufactures some components in Shanghai, with server assembly either in Fremont, California; or just outside Cologne, Germany. The move is triggered by harsh import tariffs imposed by the Trump Administration on imports of electronics goods from China (PRC), running up to 25 percent, as part of the ongoing trade-war between the world's top-two economies. Tech stocks are rattled at the prospect of cheap hardware imports getting significantly pricier for American consumers.

Tencent Holdings, China's second most valuable tech firm after Alibaba, was mauled at the markets Tuesday (31/07), with its share value dropping 25 percent from its January peak. This translates to a stunning USD $143 billion (yes, billion) in investor wealth being wiped out. The crash has had a domino effect on tech stocks worldwide, as FANG block member Facebook lost an equally stunning $136 billion in market value, over the past three trading sessions. Apparently, buzzwords of the season such as AI and big-data aren't proving enough to keep investors interested in tech stocks as many are beginning to question the stability of the tech industry. All eyes are now on Tencent's August 15 release of its Q2-2018 financial results.

Stocks of both Marvell and Cavium rallied over the weekend as reports emerged of Marvell entering talks to acquire the network equipment SoC giant. Cavium specializes in network infrastructure equipment SoCs, such as the famed ThunderX processor, while Marvell holds IP in networking and storage. There are no details as to the value of the acquisition. Shares of Marvell rose 5 percent, and those of Cavium by a staggering 17 percent, as reports of the deal emerged. Tech stocks could rally big on Monday, if Marvell and Cavium close the deal, and Broadcom inches closer to close its $100 billion bid to acquire Qualcomm.

AMD Radeon graphics cards have always been too good at GPGPU for their own good. The new Ethereum block-chain compute network, with the Ethereum crypto-currency, works really really good with AMD Radeon Graphics CoreNext architecture-based GPUs (that's every AMD GPU since Radeon HD 7000 series). As a result, not only have Ethereum prospectors bought out nearly all inventory of AMD Radeon graphics cards from the market, but also forced an inflation of used AMD Radeon graphics cards on online tech-forums, and used-goods stores on eBay and Amazon. Some of these used cards are priced higher than even launch-prices.

Every $1,000 spent on AMD Radeon hardware towards Ethereum mining is recovered within 2 months, and then as long as your hardware lasts and you're paying your power bills, you're swimming in crypto-currency that can be converted to Bitcoin and even US Dollars. One Ethereum (ETH) exchanges to USD $265 at the time of this writing. There's already $330 million worth Ethereum being traded, and that number is only going to grow as people sell USD or BTC to buy ETH and pay for entry into the Ethereum network, and use ETH as a crypto-currency.

NVIDIA Corp. stock fell a record 10% in one day amidst a move to bearish ratings by two prominent Wall Street stock analysts.

Analysts Romit Shah and Ambrish Srivastava both downgraded NVIDIA's stock rating (from "buy" to "reduce" and "perform" to "underperform" respectively) citing concerns over "valuation and a tempered outlook for gaming."

AMD has definitely been on the upswing in recent times, with CEO Lisa Su having seemingly conducted a frail, collapsing company through the muddiest waters in its history. The general sentiment towards the company seems to now be leaning towards the "bullish" side of the equation, which translated into a cool $10.66 per stock at Friday's closing time (having increased, after hours, towards the $10.80 mark. This is great news for a company which has essentially increased their stock value by a factor of four in the last year alone.

Shares of AMD's rival Nvidia, however, have risen 60% in the past three months and nearly 200% in the past year. NVIDIA's share value closed last Friday at a historic $100.41 (having since declined towards $99.55), over a strong bullish sentiment towards the company, which has recently signed a Warrant Termination Agreement with Goldman Sachs for a $63 million value. This basically shows investors that the company has sufficient cash so as not to allow them to see their share value diluted by the sudden entry in circulation of $63 million of shares, should Goldman Sachs exercise their (now terminated) warrant.

A lot of prospective buyers of new generation GPUs were counting on the US $499 launch price of NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 to result in reactionary price-cuts in the red camp, particularly with the $549 Radeon HD 7970. NVIDIA's GPU is faster, more efficient, and under normal circumstances, should leave AMD with no other option, but to cut prices of HD 7970 to stay competitive. However, that hasn't happened, and according to a HardwareCanucks report, will not happen any time soon.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 launch wasn't just on paper, there was market-availability on launch-day, although like every other new GPU launch, stocks have been quite limited. Before this launch, AMD and its partners managed to replenish inventories of Radeon HD 7970, making it generally available, while not budging from its ~$549 price. Sources told HardwareCanucks and this situation won't change unless NVIDIA has a more full-fledged lineup of new-generation GPUs against AMD's, or unless the availability of GeForce GTX 680 drastically improves.

Today Apple announced its market value to be $500 billion dollars after a massive stock surge Monday. The tech giant's valuation is now nearly halfway to the 10-figure mark, with speculation Apple will launch iTV later this year driving shares to new record highs. Yet, Apple still has a way to go to become the most valuable company of all time. If Apple shares continue to hit new record levels, its market cap will reach $500 billion when the price reaches $537.

Still, shares will need to rise another $100 above that level to put Apple in contention for the most expensive company ever. According to Standard and Poor's, ExxonMobil was the most recent company to see a valuation north of $500 billion, back in 2007 when oil prices were at record highs. While Microsoft may not excite investors like it did in Y2K, the software behemoth still holds the record for the most expensive valuation. Its market cap closed out 1999 at just over $600 billion according to Standard and Poor's, before peaking north of $650 billion during the tech bubble in 2000. The high analyst price target on the street for Apple right now is $700. At that price, its market cap will handily surpass Microsoft's Y2K record.

Time will tell if Apple will reach the trillion dollar mark.