Scott Sheppard
March 14, 2022
Tactical Growth Mandate - Weekly Briefing
I had another Paul Tudor Jones pearl of wisdom hit me in the guts late last week “…my biggest losses have always come after I have had a great period, and I started to think I knew something.”
Going into Thursday last week, our YTD gains had grown even more on the back of some good trades in commodities and energy. On Thursday the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced that they would be moving to delist 5 Chinese listed stocks who have not provided access to proper audit documents. Though this news had been communicated many times prior to Thursday, the markets hammered Chinese stocks on the announcement.
We had re-established, in this past couple of weeks, a position in the Chinese Technology ETF, KWEB. It holds Chinese technology giants equivalent to those we know in the U.S.A. On Feb 12th, 2021 it was trading for $102.20. As of close on Friday, it last traded for $24.00, a decline of 76.5% in just over 1 year.
The kicker here is even if all these stocks were to get delisted from the U.S. exchanges, investors can convert their shares to the Hong Kong listings as most of the companies are dual-listed. Now, I’m left to figure this out: have investors messed this one up by misunderstanding what the SEC is doing, or is there a bigger issue at play? With the ETF down to its lowest levels ever, I have to wonder what kind of disaster the market is worried about?
There are times when stock markets trade on company and macro-economic fundamentals, and there are times when the markets are completely news-driven. I’m pretty sure we’re witnessing the latter right now. To apply an ancient Chinese Proverb to our China problem: “the timber is already a boat”. If we don’t get any traction in the trade early this week, we’ll look to move onto new opportunities.