China Stock Market: Decline Presents Opportunity

The Tiananmen Square massacre, in which Chinese troops killed hundreds of pro-democracy protesters, occurred 25 years ago last week. While the Chinese government didn’t give their people democracy, it did give them capitalism.

Just 18 months after the massacre, in December 1990, the government opened the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

Since then, China has become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. According to the World Bank, the per capita growth of China’s gross domestic product since Tiananmen Square is 8.8% on an annualized basis.

“While the Chinese government reacted harshly to the protesters in Tiananmen, it’s made a concerted effort to increase growth and wealth over the past 25 years, which has had a huge impact on the population,” said Jonathan Brodsky, managing director of Advisory Research, a Chicago asset management firm with $11 billion under management.

“The pro-growth initiatives, which have been a powerful tool of the government to maintain stability, were accelerated in the face of Tiananmen.”

Brodsky runs Advisory Research Emerging Markets Opportunities Fund , which has more than 20% of its assets invested in China. The fund was up 9.5% this year going into Monday.

On the 25th anniversary, June 4, 2014, the Shanghai Composite Index closed at 2024, a 1,924% rise from when the market opened. However, even though China posted phenomenal growth over that period, the stock market has experienced enormous volatility on a fairly regular basis. The index is down 66% from its peak of 6092 on Oct. 16, 2007.

Sentiment Sours

Investor sentiment has soured on China for a variety of reasons. Top of the list is that China’s economy has slid from the phenomenal growth rate of 10% a year to the merely great annual rate of 7%. Part of this is related to the declines in the economies of its trading partners in the developed world.

Domestically, the country is suffering from a bubble in the real estate market, a slowdown in consumer spending and high debt levels in the Chinese banking industry. Add to that China’s shadow banking industry, which sells Chinese consumers lightly regulated, obscure investment products, and you can see significant risk to the economy.

Problems Already Discounted?

“The problems are not new and they are fully discounted, maybe more than fully discounted, creating one of the best opportunities to buy China in a decade,” said Jim Oberweis, president of Oberweis Asset Management in Chicago. The firm manages $5 billion in assets, including the Oberweis China Opportunities Fund . The fund gained 60% last year but is down 4.9% year-to-date.

Among ETFs, iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI), which holds 25 of the biggest Chinese stocks, currently trades at a price-earnings ratio of 7.6 and a price-to-book value of 1.1, while the S&P 500 has a P/E of 17, according to Morningstar. The fund is down 3% year-to-date, after rallying 5.3% over the past three months.

Global X China Financials ETF (CHIX), which has a P/E ratio of 6, is down 5.9% year-to-date, following a 6.6% rally over the past three months.

IShares MSCI China ETF (MCHI), with a P/E of 9, is down 3.8% year-to-date, after rising 2.3% the last three months.

Originally published in Investor’s Business Daily.

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ETFs Flooded With New Money

Investors flooded ETFs with new money last week, pushing most of the cash into equity funds, even as they pulled dollars out of commodity and bond ETFs.

The $16.7 billion of net inflows that came in during the five days ended July 12 was the largest weekly total of the year, according to a report Morgan Stanley released Tuesday.

The SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) was the star of the week. The ETF better known as the Spyder dramatically reversed its net outflows for the previous 12 weeks by bringing in half of the industry’s total net inflows for the week with $8.37 billion. It was the Spyder’s largest net inflow since the week of March 12, 2012.

With the Spyder leading the way, U.S. large-cap ETFs generated net inflows of $15.1 billion over the last 13 weeks, the most of any category, said Morgan Stanley. The Spyder accounted for 54% of that total. The total net inflow for all U.S. equity ETFs was $17.3 billion and the combined net inflows for all of ETF Land was $29.0 billion.

Year-to-date, total ETF assets in the U.S. have increased by 11% to $1.5 trillion. Net inflows year-to-date total $92.2 billion.

The commodity ETF category saw the biggest net outflows, losing $636 million for the week. However, all of that came from the SPDR Gold Trust (GLD), which posted a weekly net outflow of $900 million. Over the past 13 weeks, commodity ETFs have seen net outflows of $11.73 billion, with GLD accounting for $9.62 billion. The Gold Trust hasn’t posted a net inflow in the past 32 weeks, bringing its market capitalization down to $38.78 billion.

Emerging-market ETFs was the second-worst category, with net outflows for the week at $624 million and for the 13 weeks at $11.05 billion. The iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) posted the second largest net outflows for the week and 13-week periods at $386 million and $7.03 billion, respectively. In a reflection of the faltering economy in China, the iShares MSCI China ETF(MCHI) had a net outflow of $246 million last week.

Fixed-income ETFs also went negative, posting weekly net outflows of $419 million. For the 13 weeks ended July 12, bond ETFs saw net outflows of $511 million as investors moved into short-duration fixed income and U.S. equity ETFs, said Morgan Stanley.

Among the ETFs market participants expect to fall, the Spyder saw the largest increase in short interest, at $2.0 billion, according to Morgan Stanley. This is the highest level the leading ETF has been at since April 15, and is nearly 10% about the one-year average.

Even as the CurrencyShares Euro Trust (FXE) gained 6.3% over the past year, it continues to be one of the most heavily shorted ETFs as a % of shares outstanding, says Morgan Stanley.