Hong Kong stocks close higher after early rally; Meta's Muse AI agent boosts memory chip stocks

Hong Kong’s three major indices closed higher on September 22, with the Hang Seng Index rising 0.18% to 25,087.75 points, the Tech Index gaining 0.34% to 4,438.21 points, and the State-Owned Enterprises Index adding 0.28% to 8,362.60 points.

Notably, all three indices opened sharply higher in early trading but saw gains significantly narrow after hitting intraday highs.

Market Overview

Sector performance was mixed: shipping, gold, and new energy vehicle stocks came under collective pressure, while memory chip stocks rallied on the back of Meta’s consumer AI agent Muse going viral, and major internet tech stocks also rebounded.

Shipping Stocks Fall on Supply Expansion Concerns

• COSCO Shipping Energy Transportation (01138.HK) fell 6.42%
• Orient Overseas International (00316.HK) dropped 2.88%
• Pacific Basin Shipping (02343.HK) declined 2.55%

Background: Industry giant Maersk recently confirmed an order for 26 dual-fuel large container ships, each with a capacity of 18,600 TEU, scheduled for delivery between 2029 and 2030. The market is concerned that this wave of shipbuilding could disrupt medium- to long-term supply-demand balance. In the oil shipping segment, daily earnings on VLCC routes TD3C, TD15, and TD22 hit historic highs of $1.21 million, $530,000, and $390,000 respectively on September 17.

Analyst view: Guotai Haitan noted that while geopolitical conflicts continue to drive war premiums and route disruptions, pushing short-term freight rates higher, the extreme level of current rates has raised concerns among investors about a cyclical peak and potential declines in trade volumes.

Gold Stocks Decline After Hawkish Fed Comments

• Lingbao Gold (03330.HK) fell 5.77%
• Zijin Gold International (02259.HK) dropped 5.10%
• Zhaojin Mining (01818.HK) declined 3.32%

Background: St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem stated publicly that strong demand, combined with unusual movements in non-oil commodity prices, could reignite inflation, urging the Fed to raise interest rates sooner rather than later. CITIC Futures noted that with the rate decision window closed, gold lacks a clear near-term narrative. As energy inflation trades cool and market attention to central bank independence wanes, gold prices have become more sensitive to real yields, the U.S. dollar index, and hawkish official rhetoric.

New Energy Vehicle Stocks Hit by Price War

• Leapmotor (09863.HK) fell 4.09%
• GAC Group (02238.HK) dropped 2.59%
• Geely Auto (00175.HK) declined 1.13%

Background: According to the latest data from the China Passenger Car Association, the overall profit margin for the automotive industry from January to May 2026 fell to 3.4%, significantly below the 6.1% average for downstream industrial enterprises. Vehicle manufacturing margins were as low as 1.5%, hovering near breakeven. Under pressure from rising costs, intensifying price wars, and heavy R&D spending on smart vehicle technology, several major automakers reported losses in their second-quarter earnings, reflecting a sector-wide trend of "exchanging losses for market share."

Memory Chip Stocks Rally; Morgan Stanley Bullish on Cloud Capex Shift

• Montage Technology (06809.HK) surged 8.10%
• Biwin Storage Technology (09976.HK) rose 1.30%
• GigaDevice Semiconductor (03986.HK) gained 0.49%

Background: Meta’s consumer AI agent Muse recently topped U.S. app store charts on both iOS and Android. Its ability to autonomously call on Gmail, calendars, and browsers across platforms signals a shift in AI computing workloads from offline training to Agentic AI, which relies on long-context, dense scheduling. This exposes the "memory wall" bottleneck caused by data bandwidth limitations, driving demand for high-bandwidth interconnect chips such as CXL and MRDIMM, as well as high-speed eSSDs.

Analyst view: Morgan Stanley expects that by 2027, spending on storage and interconnect chips will account for approximately 50% of total capital expenditure among the world’s top 14 cloud service providers.

Tech Stocks Rally on Agentic AI Commercialization Prospects

• Tencent Music Entertainment (01698.HK) rose 5.56%
• Tencent Holdings (00700.HK) gained 5.02%
• Alibaba Group (09988.HK) added 1.95%

Tencent hit a new high since August 12 during intraday trading. Analysts noted that Tencent holds a strong position in the consumer-grade Agent space. Its WeChat ecosystem integrates social relationships, content from public accounts and video channels, a mini-program service matrix, and the WeChat Pay network. If WeChat’s built-in AI assistant "Xiaowei" can further enhance cross-app scheduling, security authorization, and long-term memory management, Tencent could become the first in China to commercialize an integrated "interaction-distribution-payment-fulfillment" consumer Agent model.

Stock Movers

Shein Rises Nearly 2% on New Indiana Warehouse

Shein (00625.HK) rose 1.94% to close at HK$37.80. The company opened a 737,000-square-foot automated warehouse in Indiana, expanding its footprint in the state.

XtalPi Holdings Gains Over 2%; Platform Outperforms Claude in Drug Discovery Tasks

XtalPi Holdings (02228.HK) rose 2.18%, after gaining over 5% intraday. The company announced a major upgrade to its scientific AI agent platform, XtalPi Science, launching over 80 proprietary scientific tools and expanding its invite-only testing. In internal tests, the platform outperformed Claude on multiple drug discovery tasks.