In this week’s cover story, Barron’s explores the wild last week of stocks. U.S. stocks bounced back at the end of the week, recovering after Monday’s dive. Many investors seized the opportunities they saw in the low stock prices, snapping up blue chips.
U.S. stocks may be looking better, but China is still having a rough end of August. Barron’s writes that China still has another 15% to fall. Strategists are calling the Shanghai Composite’s rock bottom as 2,700. The stocks closed at 3,230 Friday.
One hedge fund has come out on top after shorting China. Crescat Capital’s CEO Kevin Smith says Bridgewater’s shift on China helped push him to move towards shorting. “Bridgewater Associates, the largest macro hedge fund in the world, turned 180 degrees on their position on China and had to be getting out of their positions,” says Smith. “There’s a general realization that this great growth juggernaut of emerging-market countries for the past decade or more is slowing, if not going into a hard landing.” Crescat Global Macro has 6.5% net gains for the month and 12.8% for the year.
Photo: Christopher