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Gavekal Research
Thomas Gatley, Wei He
Nov 02nd 2020
Strategy Monthly: Chinese Assets After The Recovery
China was the first economy into lockdown, and the first to emerge, enjoying a rapid rebound in industrial production and exports. Uniquely among major economies, China has already regained and exceeded pre-Covid levels of output. The speed and strength of this early recovery was reflected in financial markets, with equities rallying hard, bonds selling off, and the renminbi appreciating on heightened capital inflows.
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Gavekal Research
Vincent Tsui
Oct 30th 2020
Video: Hong Kong's Resilience
Massive inflows of capital into Hong Kong’s financial system ahead of this week’s record-breaking US$34bn IPO for Chinese fintech giant Ant Group represent a major vote of investor confidence in Hong Kong’s future as a financial center, just months after many international commentators were writing the city’s obituary following Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law. Vincent explores the underpinnings of this confidence.
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Gavekal Research
Andrew Batson
Oct 30th 2020
The Competition For 2035 Begins
While much of the world struggles to make it through 2020, the Chinese Communist Party is setting its sights on 2035: its annual plenum closed with a decision on its broad goals for the next 15 years. In this piece, Andrew explains how China is adapting its priorities to a less favorable international political and economic context.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Gilliam Collinsworth Hamilton
Oct 28th 2020
Themes For The Coming Plan
Party officials are gathering this week to discuss China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, a document intended to guide the country’s development from 2021 to 2025. In this report, Gilliam outlines the plan’s likely major themes and why it represents the first step in Xi Jinping’s ambitions of transforming China into a “modern socialist country” by 2049.
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Gavekal Research
Matthew Forney, Laila Khawaja
Oct 28th 2020
Webinar: China's Fintech Showdown
China’s financial technology industry has been chaotic for two decades, with Ant Group launching pioneering new products while regulators and competitors play catch-up. With Ant Group ready for its IPO, the push-and-pull between the firm and regulators is grabbing institutional investors’ attention. Matthew Forney and Laila Khawaja of Gavekal Fathom China addressed this tension and also the broader impact of regulation on the country's...
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Gavekal Research
Louis Gave
Oct 27th 2020
The Three Key Prices: 10-Year Treasury Yields
A core thesis for Louis is that in financial markets three prices matter above all others: the price of oil, the price of US dollars and the yield on 10-year US treasuries. In this second part of a three-part series, he addresses the bond market question. US treasuries are currently pricing in a highly deflationary future on both a cyclical and structural basis. Such an outcome would defy recent experience in the US bond market.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Andrew Batson
Oct 26th 2020
Macro Update: Back In Business
China is transitioning from an imbalanced, supply-side recovery to a more broad-based upswing as consumption and private-sector investment finally join the party. But policy is also normalizing quickly, creating challenges for property and equity markets. In this regular chartbook, the Dragonomics team explains the outlook heading into 2021.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Xiaoxi Zhang
Oct 22nd 2020
Banks Will Digest The Hit To Earnings
The pandemic economy has not been very good for China’s banks, with net profits plunging an unprecedented 24% in Q2 as the government pressured them to sacrifice profits. In this piece, Xiaoxi explains why things are not actually so bad: bank profits have been hurt mainly by aggressive provisioning requirements, which are likely to ease in 2021.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Dan Wang
Oct 20th 2020
The World’s Best Manufacturer
The strong performance of China’s manufacturing sector reflects both the country’s success in getting the virus under control as well as its long-established manufacturing strengths. In this report, Dan explains why multinationals are reluctant to leave a country they’ve built up to be the world’s best manufacturer.
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Gavekal Research
Vincent Tsui, Udith Sikand
Oct 20th 2020
Different Strokes For Different EM Folks
Last spring, key beneficiaries of the rich world’s fiscal and monetary largesse were emerging market economies, which enjoyed unprecedented policy flexibility that gave broad-based, if not universal, financial relief. The next turn in this crisis is, however, unlikely to float as many boats, as shown by divergent inflationary trends across EM economies.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Thomas Gatley
Oct 19th 2020
A Return To Normality
China’s recovery story continues apace, with strong showings in exports, retail sales and manufacturing counteracting a softening in the property sector. In this Quick Take, the Dragonomics team explains why Beijing is therefore unlikely to conduct further policy easing or support major infrastructure investment for the rest of the year.
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Gavekal Research
Andrew Batson
Oct 16th 2020
Webinar: Understanding Chinese State Capitalism
The advance of the private sector and the retreat of the state sector has been central to China’s long transformation from an isolated socialist nation to a globally connected economy. Yet the notions of China’s private sector being either in the ascendency, or facing a squeeze in the statist Xi Jinping era are not born out by the facts. Andrew Batson discussed the findings in his recent major piece of research on this topic.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Thomas Gatley
Oct 15th 2020
Funding The Future
China has seen a surge in funding to “strategic” high-tech industries following US attempts to strangle Chinese technological development. What’s surprising, Thomas writes, is that this funding is coming not from public subsidies but rather from capital markets, with the firms leveraging government support to raise equity and secure financing.
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Gavekal Research
Louis Gave
Oct 14th 2020
The Three Key Prices: Oil
In financial markets, there are three prices matter above all: the price of the US dollar, the yield on 10-year US treasuries, and the price of oil. Get the direction of these right, and the other pieces of the investment puzzle fall into place. In the first of a three-part series, Louis examines in depth what could cause the oil price to break out of its current trading range.
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Gavekal Research
Will Denyer
Oct 14th 2020
New Tech, Same Fiat Money (For Now)
This week saw seven western central banks and the Bank for International Settlements issue a joint report on central bank digital currencies. They come not to bury cash nor to undermine banks, but to modernize payments for a digital age. If so, the introduction of CBDCs is unlikely to upend the banking system and monetary policy, but would resemble the rollout of ATMs in the 1960s.
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Gavekal Research
Charles Gave
Oct 13th 2020
A Typology Of Bear Markets Based On Wicksellian Analysis
In half a century of doing financial analysis, Charles has acquired the core conviction that there is not one type of bear market, but two. Think of these as the gentle black bear-type downturn that is survivable and the highly-dangerous, big brown grizzly collapse that for many money managers proves fatal. In this piece, Charles seeks to map this insight with some analytical rigor.
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Gavekal Research
Charles Gave
Oct 12th 2020
Keeping It Super Simple
Let me start with President Donald Trump’s policies as I understand them. As a businessman, since taking office in 2017 his singular goal has been to keep US firms’ return on invested capital as high as possible. So, if Trump is reelected on November 3, I would expect more of the same. In contrast, a Joe Biden win would lower ROIC and cause the US dollar to fall against the euro.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Ernan Cui
Oct 12th 2020
What The Holiday Means For Consumption
Tourism over China's weeklong National Day holiday disappointed, with tourism revenues down 30% YoY. In this Quick Take, Ernan writes that Chinese consumers still seem concerned about long-distance travel, and are instead spending their money locally; however, the overall recovery in consumer spending is still continuing apace.
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Gavekal Research
Yanmei Xie, Louis Gave, Anatole Kaletsky
Oct 09th 2020
Webinar: Global Investment Roundtable, October 2020
Yanmei Xie discussed the US team’s assessment of risks surrounding the US election, Anatole Kaletsky explained the reasons for his return to bullishness and Louis Gave talked about global asset allocation and how to find “anti-fragile” assets.
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Gavekal Dragonomics
Rosealea Yao
Oct 08th 2020
The Phantom Mechanism
In late July, Beijing declared that a trial “long-term mechanism” for regulating real estate had achieved “significant results” despite having never been properly defined. Rosealea posits that the mechanism is a combination of smaller reforms implemented in recent years, concluding that major policy changes are therefore unlikely for now.