The Zhitong Finance App learned that according to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure, Wall Street CITIGROUP INC (CITIGROUP INC) submitted a US stock position report (13F) for the first quarter ended March 31, 2024.

Statistics show that the total market value of Citi's holdings reached about US$152 billion in the first quarter, while the total market value of its holdings in the previous quarter was about US$142 billion, an increase of about 7% over the previous quarter. According to the data, Citi added 345 new shares to its portfolio in the first quarter and increased its holdings by 3120 shares. At the same time, the agency reduced its holdings by 1,644 shares and cleared 410 stocks. Among them, the top ten holdings account for 23.82% of the total market value of Citigroup's US stocks, reflecting the relatively high total weight of Citibank's top ten holdings.

Among Citi's top ten major positions in the first quarter, most of them were increased by Citi, and those that received an increase in Citi's holdings were all major US tech giants. Among them, Microsoft (MSFT.US), Nvidia (NVDA.US), and Apple (AAPL.US) received a significant increase in Citi's holdings. Among them, Nvidia, the absolute leader in the AI chip field, received nearly 18% additional positions from Citibank, while Microsoft and Apple both increased their positions by more than 10%. As can be seen from changes in Citi's top ten holdings, Wall Street Bank Citi, which has long focused on index ETFs, has rarely followed the trend of global stock market speculation hotspots. The agency is chasing the AI investment boom in the global stock market since 2023.

Specifically, the NASDAQ 100 ETF put options (QQQ.US, PUT) ranked Citibank's largest holding target, holding about 15.53 million shares, with a market value of about 6.9 billion US dollars, accounting for 4.53% of the portfolio, a sharp decrease of 29.34% from the number of positions held in the previous quarter.

Russell 2000 ETF put options (IWM.US, PUT) ranked Citigroup's second-largest holding target, holding about 31.28 million shares, with a market value of about US$6.6 billion, accounting for 4.32% of the portfolio, a decrease of 5.06% from the number of positions held in the previous quarter.

NASDAQ 100 ETF bullish options (QQQ.US, CALL) ranked the third largest holding, holding about 10.67 million shares, with a market value of about 4.7 billion US dollars, accounting for 3.11% of the portfolio, a decrease of 8.90% from the number of positions held in the previous quarter.

Microsoft (MSFT.US) ranked fourth, holding about 8.52 million shares, with a market value of about US$3.6 billion, accounting for 2.35% of the portfolio. The number of holdings increased by 16.99% over the previous quarter.

Nvidia (NVDA.US) ranked fifth, holding about 3.9 million shares, with a market value of about US$3.5 billion, accounting for 2.31% of the portfolio. The number of holdings increased by 17.52% over the previous quarter.

Among the top ten heavy-held stocks, the ones ranked 6-10 were Apple (AAPL.US), Russell 2000 ETF bullish options (IWM.US, CALL), Amazon (AMZN.US), S&P 500 ETF put options (SPY.US, PUT), and high-yield corporate bond ETF put options (HYG.US, PUT). Among them, with the exception of tech giants Apple and Amazon, where Citi increased their holdings, all other stocks were drastically reduced, and the share of put options in high-yield corporate bond ETFs was reduced by nearly 47%.

It is worth noting that while Citi drastically reduced its holdings of index ETF put options in the first quarter, it also continued to reduce its bullish options in index ETFs. This operation is generally known as a “selling cross-option strategy”. This strategy reflects investors' expectations for future stock prices, that is, the stock price will not fluctuate much before the options expire, or remain fluctuating within a relatively stable range. This strategy is usually used when the market is expected to be less volatile. If the stock price fluctuates greatly, whether it rises or falls, the strategy of selling cross-style options may cause huge losses.

Citigroup's operations to increase positions with Microsoft, Nvidia, Apple, and Amazon in the first quarter can be described as being richly rewarded in the first quarter. Apart from Apple, the stock prices of these tech giants all rose in the first quarter. Among them, driven by unrivaled strong performance, Nvidia's stock price rose by an astonishing 80% in the first quarter. According to the latest results, Nvidia is still a well-deserved “strongest seller” in the global AI field. Relying on its 90% share in the AI chip field and the world's preferred software and hardware collaboration system in high-performance computing fields such as AI training/inference, Nvidia can be described as taking advantage of the CUDA computing platform, which is an unprecedented boom in the global enterprise layout of AI. In a research report, Citi gave Nvidia a 12-month price target of as high as 1,030 US dollars, which means there is still about 13% of potential upside for Nvidia's stock price.

Relying on the status of the majority shareholder of OpenAI, Microsoft has embedded the GPT-4 AI model that OpenAI is proud of into its flagship application software such as the Office series and the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, making it an absolute leader in AI applications worldwide. Performance and stock prices have continued to grow since 2023. Microsoft's stock price performance in the first quarter was also outstanding. The increase was close to 15%, and the market capitalization reached 3 trillion US dollars. Microsoft's market capitalization has completely surpassed Apple and became the “new stock king” in the world.

Judging from changes in position ratios, Citibank's top five buying targets in the first quarter were: Nvidia, Microsoft, and Emerging Markets ETF call options (EEM.US, CALL), Nvidia call options, and Nvidia put options. It is worth noting that Citi not only heavily supported Nvidia, but also bought Nvidia's call options and put options along the way, not only seeking profits from the rise, but also striving to provide downside hedging when Nvidia's stock price falls.

In addition, most technology stocks were increased by Citibank. Tesla (TSLA.US) received a 14% increase in Citibank's position in the first quarter, Google (GOOGL.US), Broadcom (AVGO.US), and Meta (META.US) also received a small increase in positions. AMD (AMD.US), Nvidia's biggest competitor in the PC and AI chip sector, received 48% increase in Citibank's position ranking in the first quarter. Qualcomm (QCOM.US), a leader in the smartphone chip field that is currently fully entering the AI PC market, has also received a significant increase in its holdings by Citi. The first quarter increased its holdings by about 66%, and the position ranking rose to 36th place.

Citi's top five sales targets in the first quarter were: NASDAQ 100 ETF put options, high-yield corporate bond ETF put options, S&P 500 ETF put options, Russell 2000 ETF call options, and S&P 500 ETF call options.