No Need to Be Overly Bearish on China, Says BofA Securities Strategist

Obviously, we’ve seen the macro data with blowout numbers in the first quarter seems to look a little bit better and people keep wondering is this a sustainable rebound in the equity market or another false darn dawn what what’s your take? Yeah, I think yesterday the macro number surprised on the upside, but market traded down. It’s partly because one overnight USA that was too strong, so the expectation for Fed rate cut was pushed back. But on the other side with the very strong China GDP, it basically means if Fed is not cutting and China fundamentally is doing fine, then the need for China doing a big policy easing is probably much less now. So the lower policy expectations on policy easing is probably one of the key reason. The other reason is the first quarter strong number has some phase effect especially for January, February, right, first two months last year it was right after reopening. So whether it’s the import, export trade, industrial production or even on some of the online retail sales number was relatively weak. So we got very high growth in the first two months of this year, but in the coming months, in May, in June, when we get to the April data for trade for industrial profit, profit and even online retail sales, we are likely to see the sequential slowdown, right. We need. That was exactly what I was going to ask because we really saw that pick up in growth of 5.3% in the first quarter in the first two months of the year in March numbers, the retail sales were down, industrial production didn’t meet expectations. So what does that tell you about the sustainability? Yeah, I mean you know if you’re talking about sustainability of the first two months, definitely not. As I mentioned there was a lot of base effect distortion that drive for example industrial profit, it was growing 10% year on year for first two months of the year. That’s because the base was -23 for first two months last year. Similarly trade the number January, February last year was the lowest and then kicked out in March, April. So export number in March, April this year is likely to continue to weaken. So you know the the first two months of strong number is very unlikely to last. But on the other side we do see signs of resilience whether it’s consumer confidence, whether it’s domestic consumption or even on some of the you know export production side, Chinese products are competitive, right. So, So I think you know no need to be overly bearish on China as well. So what does it mean for the next three to six months then? Are you thinking this trend can continue, maybe more upside? I suppose in the very near term next few weeks market might see some signs of weakness right after the the good rebound from end of January, early February markets were up double digit already. But with the good news in the price already and the sequential weakness of the data in the coming months, we are likely to see potentially weakness of the overall index level. How do you see the fallout coming? We’ve already seen the last couple of days from the State Council announcement on Friday about the increase rules on potential delistings, getting rid of zombie companies and the like. I mean that really took the wind out of the sails of the CSI 2000 of small caps. Is this a concern, serious concern or is this simply due diligence by the CSIC, they’re trying to allay the fears of investors? Yeah, I mean I think the intention is definitely trying to protect the investors, trying to enhance the discipline and you know this compliance auditing on the Chinese companies, right, the quality of reporting, the concerns for shareholder return in terms of requirement on enhancing payout. All these I think are for to protect the investors is for the good thing. But on the other side, it does mean that some of the long tail end of the, you know, micro cap companies could be under more scrutiny and face potentially delisting risk.