SunX Research Weekly｜AI Storage Opens a Super Cycle, Sector Rotation and Capital Decoding After BTC Stabilizes

1. Macro & Traditional Finance (Macro): AI Narrative Shift & Liquidity Expectation Reshaping

1.1 Tech Earnings Show Resilience, Capital Expenditure Raises Local Concerns

This week, U.S. stock market trends exhibited a classic "down-then-up" pattern. Ahead of the FOMC decision and key employment data, macro capital generally remained cautious; however, the subsequent earnings reports from tech giants mostly exceeded expectations, directly igniting market buying enthusiasm. The Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices once again hit new highs for the period, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average historically breaking through the 50,000-point mark intraday.

From a fundamental perspective, earnings from Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Apple significantly surpassed Wall Street expectations, further validating the strong demand for AI cloud computing and the earnings moats of tech leaders. However, while Meta's earnings were impressive on the revenue side, its capital expenditure (CapEx) guidance for AI infrastructure was notably higher than market expectations. This signal raised deep concerns among traditional value investors regarding future profit margins and free cash flow of tech giants, putting pressure on their stock prices. Overall, the current valuation expansion in U.S. stocks remains highly dependent on the dual drivers of sustained AI CapEx and macro liquidity expectations.

1.2 Core Theme Fission: "Computing Power" Wanes, "AI Storage Super Cycle" Rises

The strongest trading narrative to emerge in U.S. stocks this week was not traditional GPU computing power, but "AI Storage." The training and high-frequency inference of AI large models are generating exponentially explosive amounts of data, directly forcing global data centers to accelerate the underlying demand for DRAM, NAND, and Nearline HDD capacity expansion.

Industry data shows that storage giant Seagate disclosed its nearline storage production capacity is nearly locked through the end of 2027. This rare long-term order directly ignited market pricing expectations of extreme supply tightness in the storage sector. Catalyzed by this, targets like SanDisk, Seagate, Western Digital, and Micron Technology have seen astonishing gains year-to-date, with traditional hard drive and flash memory manufacturers being redefined by Wall Street as "core assets of AI infrastructure." Concurrently, facing severe "power wall" bottlenecks, targets like Pure Storage, which focus on all-flash and low-energy solutions, have become the direction of capital's frantic chase for catch-up gains.

However, it is crucial to be highly vigilant that the substantial short-term gains in the storage sector include both fundamental marginal improvements and extremely high narrative premiums. The sustainability of subsequent cloud vendor orders and the pace of capacity release will be core variables determining whether the sector faces profit-taking risks.

1.3 Fed Holds Steady, Non-Farm Payrolls to Dominate H2 Rate Cut Pricing

At the May meeting, the Federal Reserve predictably kept the federal funds rate unchanged. The persistent emphasis on inflationary pressures and policy caution in the statement clearly indicated the committee is in no rush to adjust the current policy path in the near term. However, cracks within the FOMC are deepening: some hawkish members firmly oppose signaling any easing, while dovish members advocate for earlier rate cuts to prevent economic slowdown.

On the employment data front, ADP employment and initial jobless claims still show underlying resilience in the labor market. However, market expectations for the upcoming April Non-Farm Payrolls (NFP) are noticeably lower than March, reflecting cooling hiring intentions under the pressure of high interest rates and policy uncertainty. The upcoming NFP data will serve as the absolute anchor for the market to reassess the path of rate cuts in the second half of the year: if employment data weakens significantly, rapidly rising rate cut expectations will inject a strong boost into risk assets; conversely, if the data is surprisingly strong, a renewed surge in long-end yields will severely suppress valuations for U.S. stocks and Crypto.

1.4 Geopolitical Risks Phase Out, Falling Oil Prices Build a Floor for Risk Appetite

With Iran proposing a peace framework and the U.S. pushing forward tanker escort arrangements, geopolitical risks in the Strait of Hormuz and core Middle East oil-producing regions have seen a substantial temporary de-escalation. The rapid decline in international oil prices has greatly alleviated macro capital's concerns about a rebound in imported inflation, serving as a crucial external catalyst for the synchronous rally in U.S. stocks and the Crypto market this week. Although oil prices experienced a technical rebound on May 7th, and details of the ceasefire agreement remain contested, barring extreme black swan events, stabilizing energy prices have built a solid foundation for the recovery of global risk appetite.

2. Crypto Market Fundamentals (Crypto): Whale Selling Pressure Clears, Altcoin Rotation Looms

2.1 BTC Firmly Holds $80K, Core Asset Shows Extreme Resilience

This week, the Crypto market continued its strong recovery wave. After digesting massive selling pressure from ancient whales, Bitcoin (BTC) successfully broke through and firmly held the $80,000 mark, reaching a high of $82,320, a new high for the period.

During this process, the broader market demonstrated extremely strong absorption capacity, with the bullish structure remaining solid. Ethereum (ETH) performed highly synchronously with BTC, with the ETH/BTC pair showing slight improvement but remaining at low levels overall. This price action characteristic profoundly reveals that core market liquidity remains heavily concentrated in BTC and a few sectors with top-tier narratives; a broad altcoin rally has not truly arrived yet. The core driver of this rally stems from the return of institutional capital and the repair of macro risk appetite, rather than systemic liquidity flooding.

2.2 Derivatives Structural Shift & ETF Inflows: Short-Term Bullish Sentiment Extremely High

This breakthrough above the $80,000 level was inseparable from the strong support of Wall Street institutional capital. Net inflows into U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs returned to cyclical highs in April; more critically, the Morgan Stanley-linked Bitcoin trust continued to attract old-money allocation since its launch without any significant redemptions, indicating strong long-term stickiness in the allocation demand from traditional wealth management capital.

In terms of micro derivatives structure, the market released strong bullish signals. The global funding rate officially shifted from the prolonged negative territory (bears dominant) to a neutral/slightly positive level. Open Interest (OI) showed a healthy synchronized expansion alongside the spot price breakout. Additionally, the Put Skew in the options market narrowed significantly, indicating a substantial reduction in professional institutions' hedging defensive willingness, complete exhaustion of bearish pressure, and a full shift in overall sentiment towards bullishness.

2.3 On-Chain Mapping of Traditional Narrative Premiums: The AI Storage Sector's Frenzy & Concerns

The strong performance of the "AI Storage Super Cycle" in U.S. stocks this week rapidly transmitted its narrative to the Crypto market. Decentralized storage infrastructure tokens like Filecoin (FIL), Arweave (AR), and Storj saw massive capital frenzy, with volume and open interest hitting recent highs.

The market is simplistically and aggressively mapping the macro logic of "AI massive data straining traditional data center storage" onto on-chain distributed storage protocols. However, SunX Research must issue a serious research warning here: Unlike U.S. storage giants backed by tangible financial earnings and long-term order support, the current volatility in the crypto storage sector is essentially high emotional resonance and narrative-driven. The actual on-chain AI data storage demand, protocol fee revenue captured, and network utilization have yet to be fully verified by fundamentals. Once speculative capital withdraws, without real performance support, this sector could face a brutally severe valuation correction.

2.4 Compliance Infrastructure & DeFi Resilience: Industry Bedrock Continuously Strengthened

On the policy and institutional infrastructure front, several long-term positive signals were released this week. The U.S. CLARITY Act successfully moved to the Senate markup stage, indicating that the legal framework for stablecoin regulation, trading platform classification, and ETF rules in the world's largest capital market is progressively becoming clearer. Meanwhile, traditional custodian giant BNY Mellon launched compliant BTC/ETH custody services in Abu Dhabi, completely opening the compliance gateway for Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds and institutional capital entry. Combined with the market's macroeconomic expectation game regarding a "U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve," favorable policy developments could ignite the next major upward wave at any time.

Furthermore, the risk incident of the earlier Kelp DAO hack has entered a substantive phase of governance and liquidation remediation. Aave, leveraging its decentralized liquidation mechanism, successfully recovered some of the lost funds, and Arbitrum's on-chain governance responded quickly to support unfreezing related ETH. This stress test has proven that top DeFi protocols are maturing in their ability to handle extreme tail risks through on-chain governance, automated liquidation, and asset disposal capabilities, significantly boosting long-term confidence in on-chain lending markets among existing capital.

3. SunX Trading Strategy Guide: Seize Rotation, Strictly Control Risk

Considering the repair in macro fundamentals and the bullish structure of crypto market derivatives, with the massive FTX estate payout about to enter the market and U.S. employment data imminent, the market is likely to maintain a generally upward-trending consolidation tone. Capital is gradually rotating from BTC towards high-quality Altcoins, with localized sector rotation already underway.

For SunX's professional traders and high-net-worth users, the core strategy for this week should be "defend the core, innovate strategically, and strictly manage risk":

1. Embrace Core Narratives, Use Futures to Capture Rotational Alpha: In sectors like AI Storage, RWA, and potential tracks with strong market maker control, leverage SunX platform's Futures tools with excellent depth for right-side trend-following trades. Relying on SunX's industry-leading matching engine, achieve precise execution with minimal slippage during wick scenarios to maximize capital efficiency.
2. Utilize the "10% Risk Rate" Moat to Guard Against Whipsaws: In the vacuum zone above $80,000, the tug-of-war between bulls and bears will be exceptionally fierce, with false breakouts to the upside and malicious liquidations to the downside occurring frequently. SunX's proprietary "Fixed Risk Rate 10% Model" provides you with the broadest buffer zone under extreme high-volatility conditions, significantly reducing the probability of being unfairly stopped out. It is the strongest safety net for high-leverage players to protect their capital.
3. Earn Strategy in Low-Volatility Environments: For risk-averse users unwilling to endure high-frequency trading wear and tear, transferring temporarily inactive USDT to the SunX Earn account before key macro data releases (like NFP) to earn stable passive annualized yields is the most prudent allocation choice to navigate the data vacuum period.

In this magnificent super cycle, only by respecting risk can one dance with the trend. SunX Research will continue to provide you with institutional-grade data analysis and deep foresight, serving as your most solid professional foundation on your crypto investment journey.