Wall Street: Is bargain buying of AI stocks starting... Also watch China's manufacturing PMI [New York-Shanghai market outlook]

Year-end consumption expectations rise with Black Friday and Cyber Monday

AI bubble debate could instead create bargain-buying flows

This week (1-5) is expected to see year-end consumption expectations, which began with Black Friday, supporting the New York stock market.

The discounting period that starts with Black Friday — the day after Thanksgiving — and continues through Cyber Monday the following Monday is the biggest shopping period of the year.

Although many forecasts say consumption this year may slow from the previous year due to slowing U.S. employment and inflationary pressures, at least online consumption appears to have improved.

According to Adobe Analytics, Americans spent $11.8 billion on e-commerce on Black Friday. That figure represents a 9.1% increase from the same period last year.

Adobe estimates Americans spent $5.5 billion last Saturday and $5.9 billion on Sunday.

Attention is also on whether bargain buying of AI-related stocks will emerge. In November, market-cap leader Nvidia fell 13% amid AI bubble talk and the whirlwind around Google's Gemini 3.0, an occurrence some analysts view as an opportunity.

As Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) and Google's tensor processing units (TPUs) are both expected to secure positions in the AI industry over the long term, Nvidia's correction is argued to be a buy-the-dip opportunity.

Senior officials at the U.S. central bank (Fed) have entered a 'quiet period' ahead of the two-day regular meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) starting on the 9th, refraining from public comments on monetary policy. Based on previous remarks by Fed officials, while there will be many disagreements at the December meeting, the consensus is that a 0.25 percentage point rate cut will ultimately be decided.

The Shanghai market is expected to show volatility in the first week of December as expectations for government stimulus policies clash with the cooling reality of real economic indicators. The biggest variable is the November manufacturing PMI to be released on December 1. If the indicator continues to remain at 50 or below, indicating contraction, the market is likely to expect strong monetary easing measures such as a cut in the People's Bank of China (PBOC)'s reserve requirement ratio (RRR) or interest rate cuts. This could provide short-term upward momentum to the stock market.

New York = Park Shin-young, correspondent nyusos@hankyung.com