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Sysco shares rose 2.4% after the company announced board changes to drive its AI transformation.

Virtu is reportedly exploring the sale of its brokerage business for over $3.5 billion. Virtu Financial shares rose to an intraday high, gaining as much as 5.8%.

US storage stocks bucked the trend and rose in early trading, with SK Hynix (SKHY.O) up more than 6%, SanDisk (SNDK.O) up more than 3%, and Micron Technology (MU.O) and Seagate Technology (STX.O) up nearly 2%.

Supermicro (SMCI.O) opened 2.8% higher.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened down 350.97 points, or 0.66%, at 53,112.08 on Thursday, August 20; the S&P 500 opened down 29.54 points, or 0.38%, at 7,678.81; and the Nasdaq Composite opened down 136.15 points, or 0.52%, at 26,194.94.

Siemens: A warning message indicates that hackers are using new methods to exploit potential configuration errors. Currently, we have not detected any increased attack levels or unknown vulnerabilities in Siemens industrial control systems products.

On August 20th, Alibaba Group released its financial report for the first fiscal quarter of 2027. During the analyst conference call, Alibaba Group CEO Wu Yongming stated that, based on industry development trends and Alibaba's own product advantages, the long-term revenue and profit margin growth momentum of Alibaba Cloud is very strong. He expressed strong confidence in accelerating the achievement of the goal of $100 billion in external cloud commercial revenue by 2030, and stated that Alibaba Cloud achieving a profit margin of over 20% is highly visible.

On August 20th, Li Ning (02331.HK) announced that its revenue for the first half of the year increased by 2.8% to RMB 15.235 billion, with gross profit margin increasing by 0.9 percentage points to 50.9%; net profit attributable to equity holders was RMB 1.816 billion, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%; net profit margin was 11.9%, and EBITDA margin was 22.1%. Net cash inflow from operations was RMB 954 million.

On August 20th, Walmart CEO John Furner stated that he believes artificial intelligence will improve almost all of the company's businesses, making the customer shopping experience better and employees' jobs easier. In a conference call with analysts, Furner cited the AI shopping assistant Sparky as a prime example. "The number of customers using Sparky has increased by 70% compared to last year, and customers and members who shop using Sparky spend 40% more per order than non-users," he said. "Recently, someone told me they asked Sparky for a weekly meal plan with high-protein, healthy foods. Within seconds, Sparky shared the recipe and meal set, and could add all the necessary ingredients to the cart with a single click."

On August 20th, Morgan Stanley economists stated in a report that while the proportion of jobs lost due to AI in the United States remains small, this trend is becoming increasingly apparent. By June 2026, AI replacement will have an impact of up to 15 basis points on the US unemployment rate, up from 10 basis points in December 2025. The signs of replacement remain most pronounced among younger workers.

According to The Information: Anthropic's joint venture ODE has acquired artificial intelligence consulting firm Casper Studios.

Chai Discovery and Bristol-Myers Squibb have entered into an antibody research and development collaboration agreement, under which Bristol-Myers Squibb will use Chai's AI model to support antibody discovery.

The SC crude oil futures contract rose by 2.00% intraday, currently trading at 596.60 yuan per barrel.

According to The Information: Anthropic's enterprise artificial intelligence business unit has acquired a consulting firm.

Market news: Ben Gurion Airport in Israel has resumed full operations following negotiations.