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13 April 2017

China Market Strategy Hao Hong, CFA

hao.hong@bocomgroup.com

Price Inefficiency

The reflation trade is fading fast. China’s PPI is starting to roll over, and CPI is weaker than expected. Chinese import volume, excluding the effects of a weakened RMB and surging commodity prices, has failed to impress. Surging sales of excavators and heavy trucks are due to nothing much more than seasonality in the first quarter of every year. Property sales growth in 3

rd and

4th

-tier cities is plunging into negative due to increasingly extended policy curbs on property speculation in many Chinese cities. Passenger car sales growth has also turned negative. Within a month, iron ore has plunged more than 20% into the bear market territory, after suffering the biggest single-day drop for more than a year. These are definite signs that the reflation trade is fading (Focus Chart 1).

Focus Chart 1: China’s PPI, a signpost for the reflation trade, is rolling over with other cyclicals.

Source: Bloomberg, Bank of Communications (Int’l)

Market irregularities, price inefficiency and the Visible Hand. Yet the market remains speculative, and ignores the emerging evidence. The gap between Hong Kong’s property interest cost and its yield is rising fast, and indicates the speculative fervor in Hong Kong, as well as heightened probability of government intervention (Focus Chart 1). However, market irregularities flare up. For instance, the Hang Seng Index was depressed by the disappointing price inflation data for most of yesterday, till the final hour of the afternoon session when mysterious buyers scooped up big Chinese banks and the “Two Oil Barrels” (a collective nickname for PetroChina and SinoChem among Chinese traders), with very large orders to push the index to close up by more than 200 points.

Meanwhile in the A-share market, PingAn and Industrial Bank plunged 4% within minutes under very large sell orders, before regulators started to investigate the validity of these trades. But last minute buying was also seen in other index heavy-weights such as the “Two Oil Barrels” in A-shares, just as the Shanghai Composite was falling yesterday. The trades based on the XiongAn New Zone indeed started to see very large sell orders since April 11, towards the day’s end of trading session.

There are public discussions that the size of some orders coincided with the number of shares owned by some entities with state background. And this morning, a number of companies under the XiongAn theme that traded limit-up for a number of days consecutively issued notice of trading halt due to “irregularities in stock price”. (We believe that the construction of the new zone will take more than a decade, with cumulative fixed asset investment of around two trillion yuan. In an economy that at times invested about 60 trillion yuan in fixed assets, XiongAn will be a small but important part). Further, after industrial

China Market Strategy 13 April 2017

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commodities’ plunge yesterday, commodity exchange lowered margin requirements for iron ore, coking coal and coke, three futures contracts that have been under severe selling pressure.

The attention from the “visible hand” is bewildering, and may be preventing stocks from pricing in the waning momentum in China’s economic rehabilitation. Recall that “directing and stabilizing expectations” was discussed as part of the mandates in this year’s “Government Work Report”. As the mainland’s stocks are still dominated by retail trades, and the prescience of Chinese stocks to forecast future economic events has endured for more than two decades, it is not difficult to understand how stocks can be maneuvered as an instrument to set public expectations. Of course, the cost of such tactics is that stocks gradually stop reflecting the underlying fundamentals, and volatility on either up or downside gradually subsides - till eventually few could profit from trading. The drying liquidity in the offshore RMB market has already made it less relevant for traders.

Defensive rotation to unfold soon. In our recent notes “The Reflation Trade is Over; Get Set for Defensive Rotation” on March 7

(Focus Chart 2) and “A Definitive Guide to China’s Economic Cycles” on March 22 (Focus Chart 3), we discussed China’s 3-year

property inventory investment cycle and its looming peak, the upstream commodity restocking cycle and the prescience of

Chinese cyclical’s relative performance. We concluded that : 1) the reflation trade is fading soon, and global cyclical will start

to underperform; 2) bond yield’s surge will lose momentum; 3) China’s property price cycle has peaked, although the bubble

has been proved to be resilient. Indeed, some of these trends are becoming more and more palpable. As the defensive rotation

unfolds in the coming weeks, volatility will return.

Focus Chart 2: Peak relative performance of Chinese cyclical augurs that the reflation trade is fading.

Source: Bloomberg, Bank of Communications (Int’l). See report “The Reflation Trade is Over; Get Set for Defensive Rotation” on March 7, 2017

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Focus Chart 3: China’s inventory investment, rebar price and narrow money supply exhibit a regular 3-year cycle.

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Real Estate Inv Y/Y%

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~3yr ~3yr~3yr~3yr

?

洪灝 Hao Hong, CFA

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?

洪灝 Hao Hong, CFA

Source: Bloomberg, Bank of Communications (Int’l). See report “A Definitive Guide to China’s Economic Cycle” on March 22, 2017

China Market Strategy 13 April 2017

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20150616 The Great China Bubble: Lessons from 800 Years of History 20150624 Remembering “2013-6-25 20150629 The PBOC cuts. Now what?

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20151209 Outlook 2016: The Chinese Curse 20151217 The Fed Hikes: Moment of Truth 20160104 China’s Circuit Breaker: The First Cut is the Deepest

20160108 Circuit Breaker Suspended. Now What? 20160115 An Oversold Reprieve 20160203 One Last Ditch to Salvage the Property Bubble

20160217 Historic Lending! But Three Important Limits 20160301 No Growth, No Gain 20160307 Two-Sessions in a Cyclical Spring

20160321 Unprecedented Divergences 20160418 Sweet and Sour Hog Cycle 20160503 Ant Financial: A Unicorn’s Defining Moment

20160606 The Market Bottom: When and Where 20160613 The Great China Bubble: Anniversary Lessons and Outlook 20160627 Post Brexit: How to Trade China.

20160817 Shenzhen-Hong Kong Connect: A New Era for China’s Capital Market and Capital Account 20160822 Consolidation

20160912 The Most Crowded Trade 20161114 A Price Revolution – On Global Asset Allocation 20161206 Outlook 2017: High-Wire Act

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China Market Strategy 13 April 2017

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BOCOM International

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Main: + 852 2297 9888 Fax: + 852 2766 3183 www.bocomgroup.com

Rating System

Company Rating Sector Rating

Buy: Expect more than 20% upside in 12 months Outperform (“OP”): Expect more than 10% upside in 12 months

LT Buy: Expect more than 20% upside but longer than 12 months Market perform (“MP”): Expect low volatility

Neutral: Expect low volatility Underperform (“UP”): Expect more than 10% downside in 12 months

Sell: Expect more than 20% downside in 12 months

Research Team

Head of Research @bocomgroup.com Head of Research/ Strategy @bocomgroup.com

Raymond CHENG, CFA, CPA, CA (852) 3766 1818 raymond.cheng Hao HONG, CFA (852) 3766 1802 hao.hong

Banks/ Non-Bank Financials Strategy

Shanshan LI, CFA (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8058 lishanshan Karen TAN (852) 3766 1825 karen.tan

Li WAN, CFA, FRM (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8051 wanli Grace HUA, CFA (852) 3766 1837 Grace.hua

Hannah HAN (852) 3766 1858 hannah.han

Jennifer ZHANG (852) 3766 1850 yufan.zhang

Consumer Property

Summer WANG, CFA (852) 3766 1808 summer.wang Alfred LAU, CFA, FRM (852) 3766 1807 alfred.lau

Oliver LIU (852) 3766 1835 oliver.liu Philip TSE, CFA, FRM (852) 3766 1815 philip.tse

Carmen WONG (852) 3766 1830 carmen.wong

Environmental Services Renewable Energy

Wallace CHENG (852) 3766 1810 wallace.cheng Louis SUN (86) 21 6065 3606 louis.sun

Gaming & Leisure Technology

Alfred LAU, CFA, FRM (852) 3766 1807 alfred.lau Chris YIM (852) 3766 1803 christopher.yim

Healthcare Transportation & Industrials

David LI (852) 3766 1811 david.li Geoffrey CHENG, CFA (852) 3766 1809 geoffrey.cheng

Fay ZHOU (852) 3766 1816 fay.zhou

Internet Automobile & Defense

Yuan MA, PhD (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8039 yuan.ma Angus CHAN (852) 3766 1805 angus.chan

Connie GU, CPA (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8045 conniegu

Mengqi SUN (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8048 mengqi.sun

Zhe ZHOU (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8041 zhe.zhou

Shan Ying (86) 10 8800 9788 - 8044 ying.shan

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China Market Strategy 13 April 2017

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