August 19, 2025 07:56 PM GMT Asia Economics | Asia Pacific The Viewpoint: Answering your key questions on Asia's macro outlook Investors are focused on understanding how much damage we will see from tariffs, how effective China's anti-involution policy will be, implications of US-India trade tensions, and whether the BOJ is behind the curve. Overall, investors are more constructive on the macro outlook than our base case. In this report, we are addressing the top 10 questions that came up in our recent clie ...

Rob Row who joins us now. Um there was an interesting chart that caught my eye from Apollo this morning on this whole AI theme which showed that historically private consumption has represented about 70% of GDP growth. And in 2025 there's been this inflection point where now it's the AI spending contributed to the same amount as private consumption for that GDP growth.And I'm just curious, you know, what you think that means and kind of what that says about the stability of where GDP is right now. Well, I t ...

Let's bring in Nvidia shareholder now Doug Clinton of Intelligent Alpha. It's good to see you. Good to see you, Scott.You see an announcement like this come out of DC today. You say what. It's the summer of deals in techland.We keep seeing new deals. I mean, we talked about rare earth metals just a minute ago. MP materials was kind of one of the deals that almost kicked off the deal train that we've been on.Then we had Apple, now we have Nvidia. I think from an Nvidia perspective as a shareholder, the terms ...

Capital Expenditure (Capex) Targets - Amazon's capex spending target is upped to $314 billion for the current quarter, representing a reasonably representative quarterly capital investment rate for the back half of the year [1] - Factoring in Q1 spend of $24 billion, Amazon's annualized capex is more than $118 billion [2] - Alphabet raised its annual capex target to $85 billion [2] - Microsoft is projected to spend $30 billion this quarter alone, putting it on track to hit $120 billion in its new fiscal year [2] Industry Trends - The increased capex spending underscores an unprecedented AI cloud arms race among hyperscalers [2] - Most of Amazon's investment is aimed at expanding AI infrastructure for AWS [2]

the capex spend. Take a look at Nvidia. Um, look at Broadcom, new record high.Where where's the capex going. >> The street is telling the street is the street is telling Google they want them to be aggressive. The street the reaction to the increase in capex spend without question.The street believes that um being a top three player in AI is an existential necessity for this stock. And that's what I think you're seeing playing out on the screen today. Had they just merely reaffirmed or said, "Yeah, things a ...

Market Trends & Industry Dynamics - Google's increased capital expenditure (capex) forecast by $10 billion to $85 billion for the year is boosting shares of Nvidia and Broadcom [1] - Google and Broadcom have been collaborating since 2016 to develop Google's AI chips, known as TPUs [2] - Reports suggest Google and Meta are considering MediaTek for cheaper AI chips, with Meta potentially using MediaTek for an AI inference chip by 2027 [3] - The custom chip race is intensifying for both Nvidia and Broadcom as MediaTek gains traction [7] Competitive Landscape & Potential Risks - MediaTek's cost advantage in custom silicon could put pressure on Broadcom's margins and increase competition in the coming years [4] - Custom chips (ASICs) can offer greater efficiency for specific data center tasks, potentially challenging Nvidia's GPU dominance as AI workloads mature [5] - Nvidia's CEO downplays the threat of custom chips, emphasizing Nvidia's scale and CUDA software advantage [6] Company Strategy & Outlook - Broadcom remains confident due to its strong pipeline, despite the increasing competition in custom chips [6]

Capex Boom & Economic Growth - Business equipment production rose 23% in Q1, and GDP accounts showed a 24% increase [4] - Q2 showed a near 11% increase, resulting in a 17% annualized gain over two quarters, the largest since 1997 (excluding the pandemic) [4][5] - The extension of tax policy incentivized companies to invest in capital [6] - Expects capex trajectory to remain strong, fostering upward pressure on wages [7] - Sees potential for a "blue wages boom" with non-supervisory production workers earning bigger paychecks [7] - The administration's outlook is based on 3% growth, considered doable due to productivity trends and labor force participation [18][20] - Expects AI boom to generate quicker payoffs from capital investment [20] - If growth reaches 3%, there could be an additional $4 trillion not counted by the CBO, potentially alleviating deficit concerns [21] Tariffs & Inflation - Tariffs have not had the expected effect on price data, with most of the tariff being absorbed in the margin [12] - The majority of the tariff has been absorbed in the margin [12] - The US could be collecting $300 billion in tariffs, but inflation data has been minimal [13] - Energy costs and capex tend to be disinflationary, offsetting potential lingering effects from tariffs [14] International Trade & Investment - Japan will commit over $500 billion (550 billion) to the US through an innovation fund [16]

All right, why don't we start with Alphabet. I think a lot of people see Alphabet as potentially a tipping point in this market either to go, you know, further to the upside or maybe even kind of take a a leg on the downside. I'm looking at the estimates for the cloud business, the estimates about 26% growth year-over-year.For the ad business, it's around 7%. Is it good enough for Alphabet to meet those metrics or do you need to see not only a beat but also a raise of guidance. >> No, I don't think so.I thi ...

I I think the question is what do you do. What do you watch for as the indicator. What's your indicator to tell you is the market rolling over.And I think there's no industry that better reflects the recovery that we have experienced than the semiconductor industry. Remember, if you think about where the semiconductor industry was coming into 2025, the semiconductor industry had kind of lost some of the bullish sentiment, some of the bullish positioning. It went towards software.People said, "Okay, you're m ...

But will next week's results fuel the fire for stocks or put an end to their record rally. Tim, what do you think. We're going to get an awful lot of reads from, yes, big tech, but like we mentioned, Coca-Cola, General Motors, reads really across the board.What should we be expecting. How do we position. Well, I I think the market is certainly positioned that that the tariff impact is is less than a headwind than we thought going into Q1, or at least expecting Q1 earnings, I should say.And so it's a very di ...