China's exports, US decline, Zhongtegu and AI... This is Hong Hao's latest opinion!

On the evening of May 18th, Hong Hao, a partner and chief economist of CICC, shared his views on China's economic data, special estimates, and artificial intelligence (AI) in an online exchange.

Liuli Investment Report summarized Hong Hao's views, and Longbridge selected and organized them as follows:

China's exports and the US economy

From the data in April, China's exports in March and April were significantly stronger than expected, which far exceeded economists' expectations.

On the other hand, the demand in the United States was clearly affected by the tightening of liquidity, which essentially suppresses real demand to curb inflation.

Although the Federal Reserve continues to raise interest rates, the balance sheets of US households have been repaired for many years and are in good condition. The interest rate sensitivity of assets on the household side is higher than that of liabilities. Therefore, raising interest rates will not only have a negative impact on disposable income of households, but also have a positive effect.

This is also one of the reasons why the US economy is so resilient.

According to the Federal Reserve's own forecast, the probability of a recession is around 80% now.

In history, when the probability was so high, no recession could be avoided.

However, the decline of the real economy and the bottoming out of the capital market are not simultaneous, and the market bottoming out often comes first.

Whether the decline of US stocks since last year has to some extent reflected expectations of a recession is worth discussing.

The A/H premium of special estimates has reached a historical high

There is also a very interesting phenomenon in Hong Kong: state-owned enterprises or companies with Chinese names have performed very well in terms of stock prices this year, and A shares have also performed very well.

However, because A shares have performed particularly well, it has led to an expansion of the A/H premium.

That is to say, the valuation premium of companies listed in both places has widened, reaching a historical high second only to the bubble in 2007.

Previously, people thought that the premium was due to the lack of connectivity between the two places and the absence of arbitrage mechanisms, so the price difference could be sustained. As a result, after the Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect was opened, the price difference widened instead.

The premium has existed for so long and has not converged. Even after the interconnection between the two places, it has expanded again. There must be a reason for this, otherwise it cannot be sustained.

The Hong Kong market has its own unique side.

First of all, we are not talking about macro liquidity, not M1, M2 and other things, but the liquidity of the top trading in the market.

If you look at the stocks outside the top 50 stocks in the Hong Kong market, there is actually not much liquidity. 80%-90% of the liquidity is concentrated in 50 stocks, while there are only about 3,000 stocks in the Hong Kong market, so what do you think the other stocks are doing? They are all lying flat.

This is a very strange structure in the Hong Kong market.

When these state-owned enterprises are traded in Hong Kong, they are not at an advantage. Instead, people tend to buy some private enterprises, thinking that their disclosures are more sufficient, etc.

Restrictions on foreign investment targets

For compliance reasons, foreign investment in Hong Kong cannot buy these stocks with Chinese characters.

Therefore, in addition to the unique market structure, this also directly leads to further widening of the price difference.

Although these stocks have also risen a lot, due to funding restrictions, they cannot fully realize their own valuations.

Hong Kong's valuations always seem to be low.

AI will inevitably have a process of separating truth from falsehood

The topic of AI is actually very interesting, and it feels great to use it.

Suddenly you find that this thing gives you a stunning feeling, it can do a lot of physical work that you don't want to do but have to do.

The AI concept stocks in the US, such as Microsoft and Google, have not seen the same rise as domestic ones.

Hong Hao believes that some companies are really doing it, including those top technology companies, but more companies are just telling stories.

Therefore, there must be a process of separating truth from falsehood.

At this time, due to the mix of good and bad, luck may be far more important than technology.