China starts to reverse its ‘uninvestible’ image: Chart of the Week

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A cursory glance at the recent performance of China’s stock market shows a wild disconnect from the S&P 500, Germany’s DAX, the UK’s FTSE, and even le CAC.

Despite being a tech manufacturing powerhouse, you’d never know there’s been an artificial intelligence boom helping to power other major global markets to new record highs.

Since 2021, China’s stock market has been struggling thanks to a variety of factors: the country’s aggressive zero-COVID policies, a real estate crash and debt crisis, and more. The government has tried various strategies to reinvigorate the market, but little has had an impact.

The country unveiled its latest strategy on Tuesday, an aggressive suite of stimulus measures, prompting the classic question: Is this time different?

The latest wave of efforts, which mostly comprise monetary policy, aims to inject liquidity and make borrowing easier, if there’s demand for loans.

Our Chart of the Week shows that, so far at least, the market has an answer to that question: Yes, it will be different. The stimulus news sent Chinese stocks charting a vertical line for the first time in years, changing the downward line into the beginning of a V as investors judged they saw a fundamental change to China’s narrative.

“[Global] investors have deemed Chinese equities to be almost uninvestable, despite the obvious potential inherent in the world’s second-largest economy,” DataTrek’s Nicholas Colas wrote in a note to clients this week. “This week’s surprise announcement of aggressive fiscal and monetary policy action is spurring a reappraisal of that view.”

As billionaire David Tepper put it, it’s now time to buy “everything” in China.

The roots of that reappraisal stem from the government itself, which exerts economic control.

“China’s leadership has finally acknowledged that the country’s economy needs much more monetary and fiscal stimulus if it is to achieve its growth potential over time,” Colas wrote.

Some China experts, like Charles Schwab’s chief global investment strategist Jeffrey Kleintop, aren’t yet convinced that the measures announced this week will, in fact, work to reverse China’s fortunes, noting that the “jury is still out.”

But while the actions so far may not cure the economy’s woes, the sentiment that the patient has finally been driven to the hospital is enough for investors to hope, sending China’s stocks up and to the right.

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