Northbound funds | Northbound trading recorded a net buy of 1.193 billion. Northbound funds increased positions in AI hardware stocks and scrambled to buy Baidu (09888) throughout the day, exceeding 4.2 billion.

On September 18 in the Hong Kong stock market, northbound trading recorded a net buy of HK$1.193 billion. Among this, Hong Kong Stock Connect (Shanghai) recorded a net buy of HK$17 million, and Hong Kong Stock Connect (Shenzhen) recorded a net buy of HK$1.176 billion. The stocks with the largest net buys by northbound funds were BIDU-W (09888), Z.AI (02513), and YOFC (06869). The stocks with the largest net sells by northbound funds were TRACKER FUND OF HONG KONG (02800), BABA-W (09988), and GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. (03986). Active stocks via Hong Kong Stock Connect (Shanghai) Active stocks via Hong Kong Stock Connect (Shenzhen) BIDU-W (09888) received a net buy of HK$4.261 billion. Baidu Group's AI cloud infrastructure revenue in the first half of the year was RMB 16.1 billion, up 65% year-on-year. Within AI cloud infrastructure, GPU cloud revenue grew 230% year-on-year. At the 2026 Intelligent Economy Forum, Baidu AI Cloud proposed the concept of an "industrial agent operating system," opened its Baidu Dazi ecosystem platform for participation, and announced that Tianchi super nodes have achieved full-stack domestic production and fully opened the technical specifications for six core modules. Z.AI (02513) received a net buy of HK$853 million. Z.AI officially released GLM-5.3-FlashX, with the API fully opened simultaneously. According to the introduction, the new version's inference speed can reach up to 200 tokens/s, 5 times faster than the existing GLM-5.3-Flash, with pricing raised to 2.5 times the original version. According to Z.AI, an inference cluster composed of 100,000 domestic chips was fully utilized by users as soon as it went online. YOFC (06869) and Cig Shanghai (06166) received net buys of HK$564 million and HK$296 million, respectively. Galaxy Securities pointed out that the optical fiber industry is transitioning from a traditional telecom cyclical sector to the computing power infrastructure track, with backbone network expansion and internal data center demand resonating, opening up long-cycle structural incremental space. Leading companies with self-sufficiency in core materials will fully release profit elasticity. Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (00981) and Hua Hong Grace Semiconductor (01347) received net buys of HK$528 million and HK$479 million, respectively. Goldman Sachs pointed out that driven by generative AI and local demand, China's semiconductor industry capital expenditure is expected to record a 10% to 15% increase from 2026 to 2030, reaching US$82 billion by 2030; China's AI chip potential market size is expected to have a compound annual growth rate of 69% from 2025 to 2030, reaching US$678 billion by 2030. TRACKER FUND OF HONG KONG (02800) suffered a net sell of HK$2.264 billion. Guoyuan International believes that the current Hong Kong stock adjustment is mainly affected by external factors such as oil prices, inflation, and rising overseas interest rates, and in the short term the baseline scenario remains "index volatility, industry divergence, and rotation." However, southbound funds continue to flow in, and some left-side positioning has already appeared during the adjustment of the technology sector. Hong Kong stocks' own fundamentals and capital conditions have not deteriorated significantly. In addition, KB LAMINATES (01888), GigaDevice Semiconductor Inc. (03986), and BABA-W (09988) suffered net sells of HK$16.17 million, HK$93.51 million, and HK$1.123 billion, respectively.