BABA Is In Trouble BABA有麻烦

On December 24, China's State Administration for Market Regulation said that it's investigating the e-commerce giant over a policy that forces merchants to sell exclusively with Alibaba and skip rival platforms JD.com and Pinduoduo. Alibaba (BABA) stock dropped over 13% in the same day. 

More bad news came during the weekend as CNBC reported: "The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, summoned Ant executives on Saturday and ordered them to formulate a rectification plan and an implementation timetable of its business. The statement said that Ant Group lacked a sound governance mechanism, defied regulatory compliance requirements and engaged in regulatory arbitrage. The orders from regulators could limit Ant Group’s expansion and throw its lucrative finance businesses into disarrayChinese regulators last month halted Ant’s $37 billion stock debut in Shanghai and Hong Kong over regulatory changes." 

 People’s Bank of China’s deputy governor Pan Gongsheng released a statement on sunday: "Ant must return to its origins in online payments and prohibit irregular competition, protect customers’ privacy in operating its personal credit rating business, establish a financial holding company to manage its businesses, rectify any irregularities in its insurance, wealth management and credit businesses, and run its asset-backed securities business in accordance with regulations." 

This directive implies that Ant Group's credit, insurance and investment product lines may need to be dumped and presents a serious threat to the growth and most lucrative operations of billionaire Jack Ma’s online finance empire according to Bloomberg. Alibaba owns 1/3 of Ant Group. 

An article by Mootly Fool noted: "Jack Ma has been under a regulatory spotlight since October when he made several remarks that drew the ire of the CCP, mocking them for being too risk averse and criticizing the financial regulatory system in other ways. Chinese state-run media responded with its own attack on Ma and his speech, and shortly after that, it blocked the Ant Financial IPO, which was set to be the biggest ever in the world.“

With the above negative background information, Alibaba's stock will likely be under downward pressure for a while. The technicals of BABA stocks looks very bearish as it has formed a 4 month Head and Shoulder top formation. It also dropped below its 20, 50 and 200 day moving averages, this means the stock's short, intermediate and long term trends are all down. With Thursday's volume at 7.9 times average, BABA's momentum is down. So don't be brave to buy the dip. BABA's intial support is Thursday's low at 211 and intial resistance is Thursday's high at 230. However, since it has retraced more than 61.8% of the previous uptrend, the odd of a 100% downside retracement to 170 is high.

12月24日，中国国家市场监督管理总局表示，正在对商务巨头阿里巴巴就一项电子商务政策进行调查。该政策迫使商家仅与阿里巴巴进行销售，而跳过竞争对手京东和拼多多平台。阿里巴巴（BABA）股价当天下跌超过13％。

周末还有更多的坏消息，据 CNBC报道：“中国央行中国人民银行周六召集了蚂蚁高管，命令他们制定整改计划和业务实施时间表。声明说，蚂蚁集团缺乏健全的治理机制，无视监管合规要求并参与监管套利。监管机构的命令可能会限制蚂蚁集团的扩张并使其利润丰厚的金融业务陷入混乱。中国监管机构曾于上个月停止了蚂蚁金服在上海和香港的370亿美元IPO。” 

中国人民银行副行长潘功胜周日发表声明：“蚂蚁必须回到网上支付的起源，禁止不正当竞争，在经营个人信用评级业务时保护客户的隐私，建立金融控股公司来管理其业务，纠正其保险，财富管理和信贷业务中的任何违规行为，并按照规定经营其资产支持证券业务。” 根据彭博社的说法，该指令暗示可能需要抛弃蚂蚁集团的信贷，保险和投资产品线，并对亿万富翁马云在线金融帝国的发展和最有利可图的业务构成严重威胁。阿里巴巴拥有蚂蚁集团1/3的股份。

 Mootly Fool的一篇文章指出：“马云（Jack Ma）自10月份以来一直受到监管关注，当时他发表了几条引起中共愤怒的言论，嘲笑他们过分规避风险，并以其他方式批评金融监管体系。国家媒体对马云及其讲话做出了自己的回应，随后不久，又阻止了蚂蚁金服的IPO，如果能上市，这会是世界上规模最大的IPO。

 鉴于上述负面背景信息，阿里巴巴的股票可能会在一段时间内承受下行压力。 BABA股票的技术面非常看跌，因为它已经形成了四个月的头肩顶形态。它也跌破了20、50和200日移动平均线，这意味着该股的短期，中期和长期趋势都是下跌。由于周四的交易量是平均水平的7.9倍，BABA的势头向下。因此，不要趁低购买。 BABA的初始支撑位是周四的低点211，初始阻力位是周四的高点230。但是，由于它已经回撤了之前上升趋势幅度的61.8％，因此完全回撤100%上次涨幅的可能性高，那将会到170。