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The public offering industry has not had a billion-dollar hit for more than two years. Since September 2021, there has been a lack of billion-dollar hit products for active equity funds. Although the scale of new issuance has increased by more than 20% year-on-year since 2024, there is still no sign of a billion-dollar new fund.

Looking back at the period from 2020 to 2021, there was a surge in the number of new active equity funds (sharesmergeThe scale of the above products has exceeded 100 billion yuan, with the highest exceeding 32 billion yuan. However, as the market continues to fluctuate, the scale of the above products has gradually shrunk. According to the latest second quarter report, the scale of 39 products is less than 9 billion yuan.

The best seller disappears

With the disclosure of the second quarterly reports of public offerings, the latest scale of various funds has also been revealed. Wind data shows that as of the end of the second quarter, only 26 active equity funds had a scale of over 10 billion, a decrease of 2 from the previous month and 14 from the previous year. Specifically, E Fund Blue Chip Select Hybrid is the largest active equity fund at present, reaching 39.036 billion yuan. During the same period, the active equity fund with a scale of over 30 billion yuan also includes China Europe Healthcare Hybrid, which is 32.787 billion yuan.

The top ten active equity funds in terms of current size include Fuguo Tianhui Selected Growth Hybrid, Invesco Great Wall Emerging Growth Hybrid, Xingquan Herun Hybrid, E Fund Consumer Industry Stock, Ruiyuan Growth Value Hybrid, Huatai-PineBridge Dingli Flexible Allocation Hybrid, Nuoan Growth Hybrid, and Xingquan Trend Investment Hybrid. The latest size of related products exceeds 15 billion yuan. In terms of establishment time, all of the 10 funds were established before 2020, with the earliest dating back to 2005.

Looking back at the last round of market boom, new public offerings worth tens of billions of yuan continued to emerge, and the cooperation of leading institutions and star "helmsmen" once attracted a lot of money. Wind data shows that since 2020, a total of 39 active equity funds have raised more than 10 billion yuan, and these tens of billions of popular products are all "helmed" by star fund managers.

For example, the largest initial fundraising scale among the 39 products was the Southern Growth Pioneer Hybrid Fund, which reached 32.115 billion yuan. Its fund manager was Mao Wei, a well-known "helmsman" of Southern Fund. In addition to this fund, China Universal Mid-Cap Value Select Hybrid Fund and Penghua Craftsmanship Select Hybrid Fund followed closely with issuance scales of 29.743 billion yuan and 29.691 billion yuan respectively. The "helmsmen" of these two funds at the time of issuance were also well-known fund managers Hu Xinwei and Wang Zonghe.

However, the good times did not last long. Since the second half of 2021, the equity market has gradually entered a stage of shock adjustment. Since September of the same year, no active equity fund has had an initial fundraising scale of over 10 billion. Data shows that in 2020, a total of 28 active equity products worth over 10 billion were launched, and in 2021 there were 11. Since 2022, only 9 newly issued funds have a scale of over 10 billion yuan, of which 7 are interbank certificate of deposit index funds, 1 is a public REITs, and 1 is a medium- and long-term pure bond fund. It can be seen that active equity funds have been absent from the 10 billion new products in the past two years.

According to Wind data, as of July 23, 2024, the total issuance of new funds has reached 708.276 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 26.46% compared with 560.089 billion yuan in the same period of 2023. However, judging from the products issued this year, the three products with the largest issuance scale have only raised 8 billion yuan, and all of them areBondsIf we expand the scope, the top 50 newly issued products this year are all bond funds and public REITs.

In the view of Yang Delong, chief economist of Qianhai Kaiyuan Fund, the absence of billion-dollar hot equity funds in recent years is mainly related to the market environment. Before 2021, the fund market had a strong upward trend, and most funds performed well, which attracted a large number of investors to buy funds. Therefore, at that time, the issuance of new funds was extremely popular. However, as the market continued to fluctuate, fund performance also performed poorly, investor confidence was affected, and the willingness to buy funds was not strong, so billion-dollar hot funds became increasingly rare.

Wind data shows that as of July 23, the largest new issuance of active equity funds since 2024 was only over 1 billion yuan, which was the Xingquan Dividend Mixed Fund with an initial fundraising of 1.398 billion yuan. During the same period, Tianhong Dividend Smart Selection Mixed Fund and China-Europe Prosperity Selection Mixed Fund raised more than 1 billion yuan, at 1.128 billion yuan and 1.11 billion yuan respectively.

No more glory

While new products are missing, the scale of billion-yuan blockbuster products established in the hot market has also suffered a "Waterloo", and there are no products in the "billion-yuan" echelon. Overall, as of the end of the second quarter of this year, among the 39 billion-yuan blockbuster products established after 2020, the largest scale was only 8.98 billion yuan, which was the E Fund High Quality Strict Selection Three-Year Holding Mixed Fund. Looking back at the end of the first quarter, although there were no products with a scale of more than 10 billion yuan, there were still two products with a scale of more than 9 billion yuan.

From the perspective of individual products, the aforementioned Southern Growth Pioneer Mixed Fund had a combined size of only RMB 4.194 billion by the end of the second quarter of 2024. During the same period, the latest sizes of China Universal Mid-Cap Value Selected Mixed Fund and Penghua Craftsmanship Selected Mixed Fund also fell to RMB 7.516 billion and RMB 8.154 billion respectively.

In addition, among the aforementioned 39 billion-yuan hot-selling products, some products have fallen to only about 1 billion yuan in scale. Data shows that as of the end of the second quarter, the combined scales of China Universal High-Quality Growth Mixed Fund, China Universal Large-Cap Core Asset Growth Mixed Fund, Ping An Low-Carbon Economy Mixed Fund, Penghua Innovation Growth Mixed Fund, Bank of Communications Qihui Mixed Fund, and Industrial Bank High-Quality Growth Mixed Fund were 1.995 billion yuan, 1.803 billion yuan, 1.66 billion yuan, 1.653 billion yuan, 1.233 billion yuan, and 1.046 billion yuan, respectively.

An employee of a fund company in South China said that in recent years, the A-share market has indeed been experiencing a rare bottom cycle. Coupled with changes in the external environment, the investment experience of fund investors is very bad. The decline in fund size is caused by the decline in net value on the one hand, and on the other hand, it is also caused by some fund investors who can't bear it and "cut their losses" and redeem at the bottom. As far as active equity is concerned, no matter how excellent the fund manager is, no matter how effective the investment strategy is, there must be an upper limit to the boundary of his ability and the scale of product management. Therefore, as a fund manager, it is still necessary to frame and limit the scale of the products managed by the fund manager based on the portrait of the fund manager's past investment experience and the calculation of the investment strategy, and try to avoid the constraints of too large a scale on investment management actions.

Yang Delong also mentioned that if the fund management scale is too large, it will indeed have an impact on the fund manager's operations. Due to the large size of the fund, there will be insufficient flexibility in terms of position adjustment and allocation. In terms of stock selection, it is also difficult to select enough high-quality companies. Overall, if the market environment is not good, no matter what stocks and industry sectors are allocated, there will be a risk of decline. As for the size of the fund, it is still necessary to control it appropriately. After all, the large size will increase the difficulty of operation, and the fund product will ultimately rely on performance to win. Funds with good performance will eventually be recognized by investors.

As Yang Delong said, there are also individual products that have achieved counter-cyclical growth in scale due to outstanding performance, breaking through the 10 billion mark. For example, data shows that among the active equity funds with a scale of over 10 billion at the end of the second quarter of this year and established after January 1, 2020, there is Ruiyuan Balanced Value Three-Year Holding Period Mixed Fund, with a latest scale of 11.915 billion yuan, while its establishment scale was only 5.965 billion yuan. At the same time, in April 2021, the latest scale of Dongfanghong Qiheng Three-Year Holding Mixed Fund, which was transformed from a collective asset management plan, also reached 10.052 billion yuan. Judging from the performance within the year, Ruiyuan Balanced Value Three-Year Holding Period Mixed Fund and Dongfanghong Qiheng Three-Year Holding Mixed Fund both outperformed the average yield of similar funds.

How to change

In recent years, with the rapid development of the public offering market, the scale of management has exceeded 20 trillion yuan and 30 trillion yuan. According to the data of China Securities Association, at the end of January 2021,Raised fundsThe scale exceeded 20 trillion yuan for the first time. At the end of April 2024, the scale of public funds once again ushered in a historic moment, exceeding 30 trillion yuan for the first time.

Judging from the latest data, the total scale of public offerings is still rising steadily. However, the types of products that carry the "banner" of new issuance have gradually shifted from equity funds to fixed income funds. Wind data shows that as of July 23, the scale of new issuance of bond funds accounted for as much as 81.02% of the total scale of new issuance. In 2020-2021, the scale of new issuance of equity funds accounted for more than 60%.

Three years ago, the public offering market was flourishing, but now, the billion-dollar blockbuster has "returned to zero", and the once boasted "big promises" have become "shrinking" in size. Active management has lost trust, fund companies have lost management fees, and investors have lost their principal, all of which are not good.

After learning from the painful experience, if the industry problem of "easy to do but difficult to issue, easy to issue but difficult to do" is once again faced in the future, how should fund managers balance scale and performance?

Jia Zhi, managing director of Hualin Securities Asset Management Tribe, believes that most of the popular equity funds in the past were issued at the peak of the market, but the performance of the products has continued to decline in the past two years, and the scale of management has also declined accordingly. The excessive scale of fund management also challenges the management ability of fund managers. Public funds emphasize diversified investment, and funds with excessive scale need fund managers toPositionsAlthough fund managers have their own capabilities and limited energy, they can cover more industries and individual stocks. Therefore, whether the scale of fund managers' management is suitable for a large increase depends on whether the fund company can increase its investment research team and provide sufficient resource support.

The aforementioned person from a fund company in South China also said that new funds can be launched in a hot market, but it should be done in moderation. "Why can we launch new funds? Regulators encourage the development of equity investment, but without the incremental funds brought by new products, there is no way to develop. Therefore, scale itself is also an important support for the development of the industry. Moreover, for fund companies, if there is no certain scale and management fee income, many institutions will lack the basic operating costs to survive the bottom of the industry cycle, which is indeed difficult. Why should we be moderate? We often say that restraint is the greatest virtue in the asset management industry. A hot market often means crowded tracks and higher valuations. In this market environment, if too many products are issued, or the products issued are too extreme, they may face the dilemma of high-level issuance and losses for fund investors, which is not conducive to the long-term development of the industry."

"Most investors follow the trend, and few invest against the trend. Therefore, when the market is good, the scale of new fund issuance is also large. For most fund companies, in order to seek development, they still tend to issue new products when the market is hot, but if the scale of new issuance is too large, it may also cause some investors to be trapped at high levels. Therefore, in terms of issuance timing, it is recommended that fund managers make appropriate choices and risk warnings. At the same time, you can also try not to rush to issue new products at high points.Open a position, and then build positions after the market has adjusted. "Yang Delong said.

I believe that with the continuous development of the wealth management market, billion-dollar blockbusters will eventually return. However, when the next round of "bull market" comes, how to safeguard the interests of all parties requires public fund managers to continue to explore.

Beijing Business Daily reporter Li Haiyuan