Bank of America: Q3 average DRAM price may rise 21% quarter-on-quarter, higher than TrendForce's forecast.
According to Bank of America (BofA) Global Research’s "Global Memory Tech" report, channel checks found that newly agreed DRAM contract prices in the third quarter rose higher than market expectations. Server DRAM prices increased 20% to 30% quarter-over-quarter, driven primarily by high-speed LPDDR5, surpassing the market’s prior forecast of no more than 20%. Spot demand also remained robust; commodity DDR5 and traditional DDR4 prices continued their quarter-over-quarter rise in July. Recent orders for high-priced HBM4 are also growing, while conversely, the share of orders for lower-cost HBM3E has fallen. The report states that the share of DRAM sales covered by long-term supply agreements is well below 50%, with non-long-term agreement sales making up roughly 60% to 70%. Even under long-term contracts, some orders have already seen confirmed quarter-over-quarter increases of 5% to 10%. Some original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) are accelerating order placements, signaling that quarter-over-quarter price gains for both DRAM and NAND could exceed 20%. BofA projects that the average global DRAM selling price in the third quarter will rise 21% quarter-over-quarter, higher than TrendForce’s forecasts of a 13% to 18% increase for traditional DRAM and an 8% to 13% rise when including HBM.
3 minutes ago
Analyst: Bitcoin bear market may be nearing its end, short-term holders' cost has dropped to $69,000.
CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost wrote that Bitcoin’s bear market has lasted roughly 9 months, affecting both short-term and long-term holders. The cost basis of short-term holders has fallen below that of long-term holders, a trend confirmed over three days, triggering a "bear market nearing its end" signal. This metric excludes BTC held for more than seven years when calculating long-term holders’ cost basis, to more accurately reflect economically active long-term positions. Darkfost stressed that this signal does not mean the bear market will end immediately or that the market bottom is already locked in; instead, it signals the market may be entering the final phase of the bear market, during which a dollar-cost averaging (DCA) strategy is likely more rational. He noted that if short-term holders’ cost basis later rises back above long-term holders’ cost basis, this will mark a confirmation of the start of a bull market, serving as a reference to end DCA. Currently, short-term holders’ cost basis has dropped from $112,500 to $69,000.
3 minutes ago
Bitcoin has a 74% probability of rising to $70,000 this year.
Prediction market platform Polymarket puts the probability of Bitcoin rising to $70,000 this year at 74%. It also assigns a 34% chance of Bitcoin hitting $80,000, and a 17% probability of it reaching $90,000.
3 minutes ago
SemiAnalysis: Kimi K3 significantly reduces KV (Key-Value) transmission bandwidth, but AI network demand will not shrink as a result.
Independent semiconductor and AI research firm SemiAnalysis has published a report stating that while Kimi K3 uses KDA for roughly three-quarters of its network layers, cutting KV cache transmission bandwidth by up to 10 times compared to a full global attention model, this does not mean the AI network switch market will see a significant contraction. The Kimi K3 boasts 2.8 trillion parameters; even with MXFP4 precision, each forward computation requires around 1.5TB of HBM bandwidth. To maintain reasonable interaction speed while enabling profitable deployment, the model still needs high-bandwidth network connections such as GB300 NVL72 to link a large number of chips, and relies on WideEP for scaling services. WideEP distributes 896 expert models across multiple GPUs, performing token distribution and result merging twice per layer and per forward pass, with over 120 such operations required for a single forward computation. In contrast, KV cache transmission between pre-filling and decoding only occurs once per conversation round, meaning the bandwidth saved by KDA may be far less than the network scaling demands imposed by large-scale expert models. SemiAnalysis adds that more efficient attention mechanisms could also push context lengths from 1 million tokens to over 5 million tokens. Per Jevons’ paradox, efficiency improvements may expand the overall scale of AI usage, further increasing network requirements.
3 minutes ago
Goldman Sachs: Deleveraging in tech stocks may be nearing an end, but there is a lack of near-term catalysts for a reversal.
Goldman Sachs partner and head of EMEA hedge fund business Mark Wilson said the current momentum trading sell-off has lasted 17 trading days. The U.S. stock market’s momentum factor has pulled back 28% from its peak, while the momentum factor for technology, media and telecom (TMT) has dropped 40% — the fastest and deepest pullback on record.
Sub-sector-wise, the KOSPI has fallen 27% from its high, U.S. AI-benefiting stocks have pulled back around 25%, global memory chip stocks are down 36%, and European semiconductors have dropped 23%. Goldman Sachs data shows that the volatility of the high-beta momentum portfolio is roughly 10 times that of the S&P 500 index, while the average implied volatility of individual stocks is 2.8 times that of the index.
Wilson believes the current sell-off is mainly driven by crowded positions, concentrated leverage and deleveraging, rather than a deterioration in macroeconomic conditions or corporate earnings. U.S. banking lending and consumption data remain on the rise, and TSMC and ASML have also issued positive business signals, yet their related stocks still fell after earnings reports.
He tends to view that the momentum factor’s liquidation process is nearing its end, but there is still a lack of immediate catalysts to reverse the market in the short term. The technology sector remains overvalued, and a new leading sector may need to be further clarified after the second-quarter earnings are digested.
3 minutes ago
Serenity: SK Hynix ADRs and Korean Shares to Be Convertible Starting July 29; Over 25% Premium Likely to Narrow
Serenity stated in a post that SK Hynix’s American Depositary Receipts (SKHY) currently trade at a premium of over 25% relative to its local Korean shares. The two share classes will become mutually convertible starting July 29. Serenity noted that the opening of the conversion mechanism will create conditions for arbitrage trading, potentially narrowing the ADR premium—an outcome that could see either a rise in Korean local shares or pressure on the U.S.-listed ADRs. Serenity added that the current U.S. ADRs represent about 2.5% of total shares, with an additional roughly 22.5% of shares eligible for conversion at that time.
3 minutes ago