featured insights & webinar
The red-hot performers of the past 12 months have been the broad market indices from North Asia – Kospi (44%), CSI 300 (34%), TWSE (30%)
Jan 12, 2021
Where to find growth and position for a fresh start in 2021 as we navigate through COVID recovery and geopolitical tensions? In this webinar, our co-CIO David Lai discussed with our colleague Larry Kwok on key growth markets and growth sectors in Asia, how one could capture such megatrend-driven secular alpha efficiently via Premia strategies, and also some common topics of interest under the recent market environment.
Jan 04, 2021
Outperformer from first news of successful vaccines. Emerging ASEAN has been one of the best performers among major global equity indices since the start of November. And that was likely due to the region’s high economic leverage to normalisation after the distribution of COVID-19 vaccines and its high trend GDP growth rates relative to other Emerging Market economies.
Dec 24, 2020
Global equities look likely to push higher in 2021, despite the pandemic’s economic and human toll.
Dec 23, 2020
To summarize the year of 2020, the opening lines from Charles Dicken’s A Tale of twin cities sounds like an accurate description. It was certainly the best of times and the worst of times. Global equities have been doing reasonably well with developed market up by 12.0% and emerging market up by 11.7%. Fixed income managed to gain by 7.4% whilst gold price was up by 19.1%. On the other hand, real economy has been suffering from the pandemic with almost all major economies getting into recession. International Monetary Fund sees the world would contract by 4.4% in total output, the worst crisis since the 1930s Great Depression with -5.8% among advanced economies and -3.3% on developing countries.
Dec 02, 2020
From a total portfolio perspective, global asset owners and allocators are increasing wary about the overall portfolio sensitivity to interest rate changes and ultimately risk diversification. The concept of “equity duration” was raised long ago and has been subject to debate for decades. While some absolute calculations fail to work in today’s markets, we believe the economic and financial intuition beneath still hold. In this working paper, we took a renewed approach to analyze the relationships from a relative perspective and with an overarching objective of total portfolio risks in mind.
Nov 26, 2020
A major global trading and geopolitical event happened last week, attracting relatively little commentary from a media more preoccupied with US politics and the pandemic.
Nov 24, 2020
As business activities in China mostly resume to a normal level, we also observed some mean-reversion in factor returns, and interesting rotation in sector returns. Still, China A shares continue to outperform the US and global equity markets. With “high-quality” growth emphasized by the 14th Five-Year Plan and “Dual Circulation”, we believe “Quality Growth” will continue to be the main tone of China A equities.
Nov 11, 2020
So, it is official: Exit Donald Trump, enter President Joe Biden. And when the cheering and crying is done, we are likely to see that the election meant more emotionally to Americans than it does economically for the nation, or financially for the markets. The big economic and market trends are unlikely to be changed by the election.
Nov 09, 2020
China’s 14th, Five-Year Plan is a refreshing reiteration of conventional supply side policies, at a time when Developed Markets are in the grip of very unorthodox economic policies.
Nov 04, 2020
BY TOPICS
Chart Of the Week
David Lai , CFA
CFA
China government bonds have quietly emerged as one of the strongest-performing major sovereign bond markets year-to-date, standing in sharp contrast to the losses seen across most developed and emerging market fixed-income assets. While elevated crude oil prices and geopolitical tensions have reignited global inflation concerns, bond markets in the US, Europe, Japan, and several emerging economies have come under pressure as investors increasingly price in the risk of further policy tightening. US Treasury yields, in particular, have risen sharply amid growing expectations that the Federal Reserve may need to resume rate hikes by the end of this year, with other central banks potentially following suit to contain inflationary pressures. China, however, presents a very different macro and policy backdrop. While expectations for near-term rate cuts by the People’s Bank of China have faded alongside improving domestic growth, policymakers are likewise not expected to move toward tightening. The PBOC continues to maintain a supportive and “moderately loose” policy stance, while China’s inflation pressures remain relatively contained. This divergence has reinforced the defensive characteristics of China government and policy bank bonds, which continue to provide stability and steady returns while many global bond markets face ongoing capital loss risks. For institutional investors seeking duration exposure with lower inflation sensitivity and reduced tightening risk, the Premia China Treasury and Policy Bank Bond Long Duration ETF offers efficient access to one of the few major sovereign bond markets still benefiting from a supportive monetary environment.
May 28, 2026
