HSBC Holdings plc (0005.HK)

The Base-case DDM estimates intrinsic value at HK$159.98 vs a price of HK$156.00 on 2026-09-25 — a +2.6% margin, so the Base case reads fairly valued. This is a mechanical output, not advice.

A measure of how closely this stock's daily price movements have tracked the AI sector over the trailing 12 months, after removing the effect of general stock-market movement. It is shown against two benchmarks: a broad AI-themed ETF (AIQ) and a semiconductor ETF (SMH), the hardware side of the AI boom. It answers "does this stock move with AI-sector sentiment specifically, beyond just moving with the market overall?" — not whether the company's revenue comes from AI.

We compute daily returns for the stock, the two AI ETFs (AIQ and SMH), and an equal-weight broad-market ETF over the trailing year, then calculate the partial correlation between the stock and each AI ETF while statistically controlling for the broad-market ETF. This isolates AI-specific co-movement from ordinary market-wide moves — a stock correlated with the market generally (which most large stocks are) doesn't automatically score as AI-correlated. See the full glossary entry for the formula and its limits.

A reading of -0.20 or lower. After removing general market movement, the stock has tended to rise when the AI sector (or semiconductor stocks) fall, and fall when they rise. It is a strong link, just in the opposite direction, which is why it is coloured red like High. It describes past price behaviour, not a prediction.

The broad AI ETF mixes hardware, cloud and software companies, so a stock can look unrelated to it while moving strongly with, or against, semiconductor stocks. For example, some large software companies have shown a near-zero reading against the broad AI ETF but a clearly negative one against semiconductors. Showing both lets you see either pattern. See the AI Hardware Correlation guide for how the semiconductor reading works.

The colour shows how strongly the stock's price has been tied to the AI sector, in either direction. It is not a good or bad rating. Red means a strong link: High (moves with the AI sector) or Inverse (moves against it). Amber is Moderate, green is Low, and cyan means no meaningful link (None). Red is not a quality or valuation warning.

No. This is a descriptive statistic about historical price co-movement, not a valuation judgment or a recommendation. A stock can show high AI correlation and still be overvalued, and a stock with no AI correlation can still be a sound investment for other reasons. Use it alongside the valuation and framework scores above, not in place of them.

Correlation measures how the market has priced the stock recently, not the company's actual business exposure. A company can have a real AI-infrastructure story (for example, supplying power or components to data centres) without the market yet trading its shares in sync with AI-sector sentiment — the underlying business case and the price pattern are two different things.

Stocks listed outside the US (for example on the ASX or KRX) trade on a different calendar to the US-listed AI ETFs used for this comparison, so there are fewer directly overlapping trading days to compare. This can understate the correlation for otherwise AI-linked international companies — a known limitation of the method, not a judgment about the company.