Here’s an interesting data point. According to Asia Asset Management, 2483 out of the 2593 registered mutual funds currently in China were profitable during the first half of the year.
And not only that, the entire group apparently raked in a whopping $138 billion in revenue during the same time frame, almost $60 billion more than what the industry made in 2014.
The three biggest winners appeared to be Shanghai-based China Universal Asset Management, which cashed in 46.7 billion yuan in earnings, the Deutsche Bank-backed Harvest Fund Management, which pulled in around 58 billion yuan in profits, while China Asset Management Co – otherwise known as China AMC – lorded above them all with an impressive 60.4 billion yuan in revenue.
Granted, the Shanghai Composite did climb over 50% by mid-June, so even the most outright beta huggers should have came in deep in the black, but still, an impressive showing nonetheless.
Everything kinda went downhill since that mid-June peak though, so it’d be interesting to see how the group fares during the second half. Unfortunately, Z-Ben Advisor’ Shichen Liu gave Asia Asset a pretty grim assessment:
“Though [the] China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) asked [the] China Securities Finance Corporation (CSF) and Central Huijin [Investment] to save the market, it [has] just simply slowed the drop of [the] stock market. However, [the] SHIBOR (Shanghai Interbank Offered Rate) (overnight)) has been increasing since July, which indicates that money market funds would have higher returns in the second half. The overall performance will still see a large decline compared to the first half [figures].”
I wonder what happened to the 110 that didn’t make it, did they get caught by the sell-off? Curious what you guys have to say.
Photo: Anthony Kelly