Investment Ideas & Market Outlook
Domestic macro: the main conflict is steady growth.
Steady growth is the core of the central economic department this year, which has been verified in monetary policy, real estate, infrastructure investment, energy investment, and other aspects one after another since the Central Economic Work Conference. However, considering the long-term and short-term goals of the regulator, there is some conflict between steady growth and other goals such as "houses are for living in, not for speculation". The government needs to trade-off. The market interpretation is that they do not believe it until the top levels of the government give a more evident trade-off target and more concrete measures. For example, if there are no more relaxed policies introduced in real estate (to reverse the confidence and expectations of house buyers and ease developers' liquidity and leverage), it may lead to difficulties in obtaining effective local financial support for infrastructure investment funds needed to stabilize growth. My judgment is that since the Central Economic Work Conference has made it clear that "steady growth" is the core of this year's work, even if the current policy does not reverse the downward trend, it is highly probable that there will be follow-up policies continuously being introduced (there is no policy space to introduce more measures, it is more a matter of determination and willingness).
Hong Kong stocks: maintain a bullish view
I still believe that the impact of liquidity and industrial policy in 2021 is over-amplified for Hong Kong as an offshore market. The valuation is below the historical average, and it is significantly undervalued even in the global view. Once people find that the actual impact is not so significant, and the top-down policy is adjusted, it is likely to have a great opportunity.
U.S. stocks: bullish on opportunities in Reopen, cloud computing, and semiconductors
1) Continue to be bullish on overseas Reopen
Omicron's stronger propagation and weaker lethality are further validated, with overseas opening up more and more. With Reopen, more consumer spending is tilted toward services such as travel, weakening the demand related to commodity purchases (Amazon's e-commerce GMV has barely grown in the latest quarter), while experiential spending related to travel and others are significantly benefiting. Google, Visa, and Mastercard announced their quarterly reports recently, and all mentioned a strong recovery in travel-related demand in 2021Q4 (Google mentioned in its quarterly meeting that travel-related searches increased 6x year-over-year in September-October last year). U.S. hotel revenue per room has recovered to 19-year levels in Q4 last year, and major European countries are in the process of a significant rebound.
2) Continue to be bullish on cloud computing and semiconductors
The fundamentals of cloud computing remain vital for both IAAS and SAAS, with several representative companies exceeding expectations in their recent earnings reports. The IAAS revenue even showed an acceleration in a single quarter. It is similar for leading semiconductor companies, benefiting from continued growth in data centers on the one hand, improving market share on the other, and achieving price increases for their products that exceeded expectations.
Investment Direction
The core investment direction in the future remains big technology and mass consumption in both China and U.S. markets.
I am optimistic in several core directions:
investment opportunities in the service industry (service platforms) under overseas Reopen;
investment opportunities in semiconductors and cloud computing under digitization trend, as well as possible investment opportunities brought by blockchain as a new infrastructure;
investment opportunities in the domestic service industry, such as property management, higher vocational education and other areas that have been wrongly killed and will be revalued.
Comments