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the long high temperature and the cold market seem to say goodbye at the same time at the turn of the seasons. the confusion of shanghai lujiazui public fund practitioners is waiting for the market to resolve it.

text｜mo yuan, a special writer for caijing

editor｜guo nan

after two consecutive typhoons, shanghai finally bid farewell to the long summer of more than 60 high-temperature days. in the lujiazui area in pudong, shanghai, almost one-third of domestic public fund management institutions and practitioners are gathered here. after leaving the torment of the hot day, during the lunch break after the market closed in the morning, they began to shuttle between various buildings and became active.

in a restaurant in the shanghai world financial center, public fund practitioners from four different companies and different positions (all pseudonyms below) were chatting with their tablemates about the troubles they had experienced in the hot summer that had just passed.

unknown fund manager: the "commodity dream" is shattered

liu yufei is a public fund manager with 5 years of investment management experience.he considers himself no longer a "rookie". like the growth path of many young fund managers, he started by managing industry theme funds, gradually expanded his investment ability circle, and became a broad-based fund manager in 2022.

compared with senior fund managers who have financial freedom, liu yufei is still working hard to buy a 150-square-meter house in a prime area of ​​shanghai. he hopes to achieve excellence in performance rankings through more diligent research and more radical investment styles. performance.

since the fourth quarter of last year, his broad-based products have gradually increased the allocation proportion of commodities, and even had an "all in" trend in the second quarter. the theme funds he manages are also willing to take the risk of elegant style and allocate a considerable proportion. commodities.

in liu yufei's view, the upward trend of commodities may not last for one or two quarters.

from last year to the beginning of this year, he claimed that he had studied the price trends of commodities over the past 100 years, and "no one understands the logic and trend of this round of commodity increases better than me."

with a heavy holding portfolio of gold, oil, and non-ferrous metals, the performance of the products managed by liu yufei once exceeded 25% in the first half of the year. however, in july, the performance began to decline sharply.

after an unsatisfactory summer, liu yufei had to reduce the proportion of commodity allocation in september due to the pressure of a rapid decline in net worth.

at noon that day, he made an appointment with the chief analyst of a certain securities company’s non-bank finance department to see if there would be any trend opportunities for securities companies’ stocks in the wave of mergers and reorganizations. “in addition to gold, other commodity opportunities will rise in the future. the opportunity may be really slim, so i must be more active in adjusting positions than other fund managers.”

young researcher: the “liquor market” i can’t understand

two tables away from liu yufei isyoung researcher wang xiang, he is a master's degree from shanghai jiao tong university who graduated in 2023. because he belongs to a top school and major in the pyramid, wang xiang faced multiple-choice questions about his future career track during his summer internship in 2022.

the two industries of new energy and asset management were the most popular employment options for their majors at that time. new energy is an emerging track. not only is the industry developing rapidly, but several new car-making companies also offer more generous salaries; the asset management industry represented by public funds is a traditional high-paying industry, and many have become fund managers. seniors and seniors are wang xiang’s goal.

wang xiang, who finally chose the asset management industry, successfully joined a medium-sized public fund in lujiazui as an assistant researcher in the consumer industry. the classmates who joined the company at the same time all envied him for being assigned to an industry where big-name stocks frequently appeared.

after more than half a year of systematic research and analysis training, wang xiang officially began to track and recommend stocks in the liquor subdivision industry in large consumption in early 2024. at that time, the csi liquor index had retreated 20% from its high, and the liquor stocks that had been consolidating for a year were facing a choice between upward or downward. eventually, affected by industry fundamentals and the capital market environment, the trend began to accelerate downward.

in the report given to the investment team this summer, wang xiang analyzed that the reasons for the continued decline of liquor include: the recovery of the macroeconomic environment is lower than expected; the production capacity of the meso-level industry is constantly expanding, and the false prosperity bubble of "controlling volumes and raising prices" is weakening consumption. broke in the general environment... but after analyzing the regular financial reports of the industry leader's net profit still growing steadily, wang xiang still firmly stood on the buyer's side and gave a "buy" investment recommendation.

in the two trading days before the mid-autumn festival, as sales during the mid-autumn festival were expected to be lower than expected, the csi liquor index fell sharply. among them, the leader kweichow moutai continued to plummet, hitting a new low since november 11, 2022.

at noon that day, having dinner with wang xiang was an "old mage" fund manager from the company who had been in the industry for more than 15 years. he noticed wang xiang's recent depression and invited him to have lunch and provide some psychological counseling for young people. he told wang xiang the story of how he got into the industry after the liquor plasticizer incident in 2021. "there is nothing new under the sun. the current valuation of leading liquor stocks has reflected enough pessimistic expectations. if it can survive the stress test during the double festival, it is expected to cause a stock price reversal." the "old master" fund manager cheered for wang xiang. .

marketing veteran: accomplishing “life events” at the bottom of the industry cycle

in the same restaurant, two girls were sitting in the corner whispering.wu xinyi is a marketer who has been working in the public fund industry for more than 10 years., her daily work mainly focuses on producing fund marketing materials and writing promotional copy. she used to be busy until getting off work at 8 o'clock every day, but recently she wants to slow down her work pace.

wu xinyi, who often writes investor education articles, considers herself a relatively mature and rational investor. when the market bottomed out in the first quarter of this year, she resolutely switched bank financial products to the company's csi 500 index. fund, and at the same time encourage relatives and friends around to seize the rare investment opportunities below 3,000 points in the market.

however, her short-term profit experience took a turn for the worse in june. in august, the fund account she originally bought at the bottom had already suffered losses. adding in the account that was previously defined as "long-term investment", her cumulative losses have exceeded 20%, basically reducing the previous few months. the money earned in the bull market was returned.

in addition to her investment disappointment this summer, she was also unhappy at work. although wu xinyi was busy in the past, she was still very pleased to see the results of her work reflected in the fund's continued marketing or the scale of new products. nowadays, not only does the marketing material that she painstakingly produced fail to achieve the marketing purpose on the sales side, but is often criticized by sales colleagues for not being large enough, wu xinyi is also often repeatedly "revised" by the company's audit department's increasingly tightened marketing propaganda.

at noon that day, wu xinyi made an appointment with a college classmate who is already a mother to ask for some experience during pregnancy. she plans to complete the life event of pregnancy and childbirth that has been delayed for several years at the bottom of the industry cycle that still has no end in sight. "my latest financial management fund has expired. do you think i can buy some stock funds?" after hearing the classmate's inquiry, wu xinyi hesitated for a few seconds and said softly: "stock funds are still very volatile at the moment. you can consider bonds." fund."

sales leader: debt-based funds take profits and urge equity-based funds to keep their "money"

the last one to arrive at the restaurantzhang wencheng is an institutional salesperson for a medium-sized public fund., he had just accompanied the company's bond fund manager to complete a road show with insurance institutions.

unlike equity funds that have been slow to sell in recent years, bond funds have maintained high investment popularity in the past two years, and their scale has also expanded rapidly.

compared with equity funds, bond funds are really lackluster in terms of marketing differentiation, which also greatly reduces the value of marketers like wu xinyi, and the relationship marketing of front-line salespeople like zhang wencheng has become a homogeneous market. the key to "a piece of meat".

but even so, the management fee income that bond funds can provide to fund companies is much less than that of active equity funds. at the same time, more individual investors and larger management scale mean that fund companies must have more professional and prudent investment research and risk control management capabilities.

bond funds are not completely risk-free. the fluctuations in the bond market that began this summer (early august) not only dissuaded some investors who were ready to pursue higher prices, but also allowed some bond fund holders to redeem their funds and take profits.

the person zhang wencheng was having dinner with today was an investment manager from an insurance institution. he planned to redeem part of the bond fund. "this year's performance indicators have reached 7788, and i want to take profits."

zhang wencheng hopes that the investment manager can transfer the redeemed products to some dividend-style equity products of his company. "our fof fund managers are more optimistic about the equity market. they believe that the federal reserve has cut interest rates and hong kong stocks have begun to rebound. a the equity market will at least not get worse in the fourth quarter."

the investment manager of the above-mentioned insurance institution did not seem to be persuaded by zhang wencheng. after all, his conservative investment strategy since last year has allowed his income to be far better than that of public fof fund managers who also allocate assets.

due to inertial investment thinking and insufficient prediction of the power of market cycles, since last year, most fof fund managers have still allocated a large number of positions in equity funds, and even index funds in early hot topics such as new energy and medicine. in terms of income, wind data shows that as of august 31, more than 80% of products have lost income, and the average net value growth rate is -4.8%.

you and i are both mortal, the industry is waiting for spring

fund manager liu yufei, young researcher wang xiang, marketing veteran wu xinyi, and sales executive zhang wencheng, four public fund colleagues have their own troubles. like thousands of practitioners, behind the confusion is the cycle of the market and industry.

the market has experienced a long correction in the past three years, which was the late autumn and cold winter after the market's frenetic summer. data released by the asset management association of china shows that as of the end of july 2024, the total net asset value of 163 public fund management institutions was 31.49 trillion yuan, setting another record high. however, another set of data from tianxiang investment consulting shows that in the first half of 2024, the management fees collected by fund companies totaled 60.409 billion yuan, a decrease of 13.84% compared with 70.116 billion yuan in the same period of 2023. nearly 70% of fund companies’ management fees fell year-on-year in the first half of the year, and some leading fund companies saw a year-on-year decrease of more than 20%. reflected in the hearts of every practitioner in the industry, there are hidden concerns about the career track and personal development prospects.

in the week before the national day, driven by policies, a-shares surged, with trading volume hitting a record. feeling the sudden recovery of the market, public fund practitioners may begin to welcome the new spring.