Category Archives: Stock Connect

MSCI and China’s A shares

June 18, 2015 By in Asian economic development, China, emerging markets, Hong Kong, Purchasing power parity (PPP), securities markets, short selling, Stock Connect, stock market Tags: , , , , , , , Leave a comment

A few days ago, MSCI, the premiere authority on the structuring of stock market indices around the world, declared that it had been carefully considering adding Chinese A shares to its Emerging Market indices–and concluded that it would not yet do so.

What is this all about?

MSCI

MSCI (Morgan Stanley Capital International) creates indices that investment management companies use to construct their products–both index and actively managed– and to benchmark their performance.

Having a certain stock, or a set of stocks, in an index is a big deal.   For passive investors, it means that they must hold either the stocks themselves or an appropriate derivative.  Either way, client money flows into the issues.

For active investors, they’re forced to at least research the names and keep them on their radar.  If they don’t hold a certain stock or group, they’re at least tacitly betting that the names in question will underperform.

 

If we measure economic size using Purchasing Power Parity, China is the largest in the world.  It seems odd that the country not be fully represented in at least Emerging Markets indices.

 

China

Beijing, in the final analysis, would like to have international investors studying A shares deeply and buying and selling them freely.

How so?

In many ways, the story of the growth of the Chinese economy over the past three decades has been one of slow replacement of the central planning attitude of large, stodgy state-owned enterprises with the dynamism of more market based rivals.  The heavy lifting has been done by constant political struggle against powerful entrenched, backward-facing, political interests that even today control some state-owned enterprises.  It would be nice for a change to have the market do some of the work–by bidding up the stocks of firms that increase profits and punishing those that simply waste national resources.

 

In addition, Beijing now seems to believe that freer flow of investment capital in and out of China can act as a safety valve to counteract the extreme boom/bust tendency that the country’s domestic stock markets have exhibited in the past.

 

the burning issue?

Foreign access to the A share market is still too limited.

Fir some years, China has had a cumbersome apparatus that allows large foreign institutions to deposit specified (large) sums of money inside China and use the funds to buy and sell stocks.  But becoming a so-called qualified foreign institutional investor and operating within government-set constraints is a pain in the neck.  It’s never been a popular route.

Recently, Beijing has begun to allow investment money to flow more freely between Hong Kong and Shanghai.  A HK-Shenzen link is apparently also in the offing.

In MSCI’s view, this isn’t enough free flow yet.  I think that’s the right conclusion.  Nevertheless, weaving A shares into MSCI indices is only a question of time.

my thoughts

As professional securities analysts from the US and elsewhere turn their minds to A shares, there stand to be both big winning stocks and equally large losers.  The big stumbling block will be getting reliable information to use in sorting the market out.

Hong Kong back to earth

April 14, 2015 By in Asian economic development, China, economics, Hong Kong, Stock Connect Tags: , , , , , , Leave a comment

After four days of furious buying by mainland institutional equity investors, the Hong Kong market had a down day today.  This comes despite continuing healthy money inflow from the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect mechanism.  Although I didn’t watch the market closely (too late in the night for me), it seems as if sellers emerged in force in the afternoon when mainland money was unable to push the market much higher in the morning.

As one might expect, the big winners of the past week were the big losers of today.

Although I feel no overwhelming need to buy tomorrow, it looks to me that Stock Connect will end up setting a higher floor under China-related shares in Hong Kong than was possible when locals and US/EU international investors were the main participants in the market.

 

I’ve been a bit bemused at media surprise that many Hong Kong heavyweights have not participated in the rally.  The stocks in question have at least one of the following characteristics:

1.  they have broad global exposure but no particular focus on China,

2.  they’re controlled by UK interests and continue to be symbols of former colonial rule, and/or

3.  in the case of the “hongs” or trading companies, they are the 21st century form of the British-owned opium companies that were Hong Kong’s mainstay in the nineteenth century.  During the Opium Wars of the mid-1800s, Britain invaded China, forcing legalization of trade in the narcotic and effectively seized of Hong Kong Island and a chunk of the mainland from Beijing.  Companies strongly connected with this national humiliation are the last firms mainland investors are likely to buy!

What stocks are mainlanders buying?  They’re what one would expect:

–companies dually listed in Hong Kong and China, but trading at a discount in Hong Kong

–companies with attractive businesses in China, but listed only in Hong Kong.

Trading over the next few days will likely give us a better idea of the staying power and price sensitivity of mainland investors.  For me, the key question is whether Stock Connect buyers will let prices drift down before reentering.

 

surging Hong Kong stocks

April 10, 2015 By in Asian economic development, China, Current Market Thoughts, economics, Hong Kong, Stock Connect, stock market Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

a rising Hang Seng

The Hang Seng index is up by close to 10% over the past five trading days.  The Hang Seng China Enterprises index, which measures the performance of stocks dually listed in Hong Kong and on the mainland, has risen by 13%+.

Both figures understate the performance of many individual issues in the Hong Kong market over that span.  Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HK: 0388), for example, is up by 40% over the past week.  BYD (HK: 0285), the battery/electric car company, has risen by 30%; Air China (HK:  0753) is 40% higher.

The bulk of the money fueling these purchases is coming from the mainland, through the Stock Connect mechanism (see my post on SC) that Beijing established about half a year ago.  The purpose of Stock Connect is to gradually allow larger flows of portfolio capital between Hong Kong and the mainland stock exchanges.  The idea is that at some point the two areas will act effectively as one.

Up until the past few days, SC flows between Hong Kong and Shanghai have been disappointing.  That changed drastically when Beijing gave the okay on March 27th for mainland mutual funds to use the SC mechanism.  I don’t know whether it happened again overnight, but Chinese mutual funds have been forced to stop buying because the daily limit to Stock Connect transfers has been reached early in afternoon trading over each of the past several days.

What is causing the surge?

Two factors:

–sharp upward movement in mainland stock markets had left the Hong Kong shares of dually-listed Chinese companies trading at extremely deep discounts to their equivalent shares in China (shares in Hong Kong still average around 20% cheaper), and

–strict market regulation, properly audited financials and the existence of companies traded in Hong Kong but not available on the mainland all make Hong Kong an interesting destination for Chinese portfolio money.

my take

As long as Hong Kong’s China-related shares trade at a steep discount to their Shanghai counterparts, arbitrage should be a support both for these individual issues and for the Hong Kong market as a whole.

For the first time ever, Hong Kong investors have got to keep a close eye on mainland exchange activity, since arbitrage can work both ways.

To the extent that any Hong Kong stocks are still about the physical place, Hong Kong, and not about the mainland, they’ll likely be significant laggards.

A tiny voice in the back of my head says that there’s something artificial about this week’s sharp rise.  If this were 1980s Japan, I’d be convinced that mutual funds had been strongly urged by some government ministry to use Stock Connect vigorously this week.  Could something like that have happened in China?  Maybe.  I think next week’s stock action will give us a hint as to whether the week’s exuberance is voluntary.

I have a lot of Hong Kong exposure already.  I have no inclination to chase stocks solely on the idea I’ll surf a mega-wave of incoming money.  Still, if this is genuine Chinese investor interest, I think we’re unlikely to see prices back at their week-ago levels any time soon.  And we’re probably going to see pretty regular mainland support for Hong Kong shares.  So I might be tempted to add on weakness.