Yesterday, the stock market experienced a significant correction, marking the end of the first phase of the bull market frenzy, and the once fervent atmosphere has calmed considerably. New investors have also learned to view market changes with a longer-term perspective.
The seasoned stock and fund investors around us have also cooled down, carefully tallying the profits from this short bull market period, and have found that their earnings are not as much as the stock indices have risen, especially the ChiNext and STAR Market indices. In the past two weeks, few investors have outperformed these growth indices.
Even after the sharp decline, in the last five trading days, the ChiNext index has risen by 48% (as of October 9th), creating a gap of ten to twenty points with one's own account. The hard work of stock trading is not as profitable as simply holding ETFs like those of the ChiNext and STAR Market, such as the ChiNext 100 ETF Huaxia (159957) and the STAR 50 ETF (588000).
Why can't retail investors outperform the ChiNext in the current mini-bull market?
Firstly, we must start with the current market structure. Nowadays, institutional investors in the A-share market account for more than 50%, gradually replacing the past market structure dominated by retail investors.
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Institutional investors tend to concentrate their investments in a few large stocks that are considered to have long-term growth potential, which happen to be the stocks with the highest weight in the ChiNext index.
Retail investors have diverse preferences, and their average stock selection ability is naturally lower than that of institutional investors.
Furthermore, the ChiNext is mainly composed of growth-oriented enterprises. When risk appetite improves recently, the market tends to assign a higher valuation premium to such stocks. This leads to the overall performance of growth sectors, including the ChiNext, outperforming other sectors.
A greater gap lies in investor operations. Retail investors generally have behavioral biases, especially in a bull market. They are easily influenced by short-term market noise and engage in frequent trading.This behavior not only increases transaction costs but also often leads to the wrong decisions of selling at low points and buying at high points. In contrast, passive investment tools such as ETFs can effectively reduce the negative impact of such behavioral biases and provide more stable returns.
Retail investors cannot outperform the index, not only in the short term but also when calculated over the long term.
In 2007, Buffett made a bet with fund manager Ted: over a 10-year period, the S&P 500 index fund outperformed a group of funds managed by investment elites.
Ted chose a fund of five hedge funds (FOF), believing that it included more than 100 of the best fund managers in the United States, and challenged the S&P 500.
Starting from January 1, 2008, and ending on December 31, 2017, the final result was that the top fund managers on Wall Street, with a total return of 36.3% over 10 years (an average annual compound return of 2.96%), underperformed the S&P 500 index, which had a total return of 125.8% over ten years (an average annual compound return of 8.5%).
Let's face a harsh reality honestly: the vast majority of investors, whether in the short term or the long term, cannot outperform the market.
Most investors overestimate their abilities. They believe they can beat the market by stock picking or market timing, not realizing that this idea itself is a cognitive bias.
Frequent trading by retail investors also brings high costs. Commissions, taxes, and bid-ask spreads, these seemingly insignificant costs accumulate and seriously erode returns.
Fear and greed always play a role at the worst times, delivering a fatal blow to overconfident investors, causing them to sell at the bottom of the market and buy at the top.
If you can't beat them, join them. Retail investors participating in the stock market, low-cost index funds may be a better choice, by diversifying holdings to average risk and also reducing the occurrence of human operational errors.In the long run, the market always trends upward.
According to statistics, there have been approximately 4,800 trading days in the A-share market over the past 20 years. The returns from long-term investments are determined by the top 30 days of gains, which account for only 0.6% of the total. Therefore, when the lightning strikes, it is best to ensure that you are present.
Index funds allow you to board this train of long-term appreciation.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) is also vigorously promoting the innovation of broad-based ETFs and other index-based products, providing retail investors with powerful investment tools.
Why does market capital rush towards ChiNext ETFs as soon as a mini bull market starts?
ChiNext, as the name suggests, has many companies with a "start-up" nature.
The mainboard market has high barriers to entry, and some small enterprises in their growth stage cannot enter, but these companies have expertise in technology and innovation in their respective fields, and have strong growth potential, especially in areas such as new energy, information technology, biopharmaceuticals, new materials, and high-end equipment manufacturing.
It is on such an innovative stock market platform that companies like CATL, Sungrow, and East Money have emerged as tenfold or hundredfold winners.
The driving factors of this bull market are the improvement of liquidity and economic expectations. Two significant policies at the end of September have increased the money in the market, and more importantly, the highest decision-making level encourages economic policies, giving people a better expectation of future corporate earnings.
Investors have more money in hand and are willing to take on higher risks, leading to an increase in the stock market's risk appetite. The expectations for future corporate profits rise, and the market valuation will increase accordingly, particularly benefiting the growth stocks gathered in the ChiNext market.The ChiNext board is primarily composed of small and medium-sized enterprises. Like young seedlings, they are the most vulnerable to withering but also the most capable of thriving. Small businesses have the potential to grow into towering trees, but they also face a higher probability of withering due to disasters. High growth is accompanied by high risk, and naturally, there is a greater degree of volatility.
Across the ocean, the Federal Reserve also launched a supporting attack. On September 19th, the Federal Reserve lowered the interest rate to 4.75% to 5.00%. Money around the world has become cheaper. Looking back at history, every time the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, it seems to inject a strong stimulant into the global capital market.
Who benefits the most? Of course, it's the growth-oriented companies that require a large amount of financing. This corresponds exactly to the companies on the ChiNext board.
When market sentiment shifts from pessimism to optimism, industries such as new energy, biopharmaceuticals, and TMT have the greatest room for rebound.
AI, intelligent driving, robotics—aren't these the directions of the future?
Most importantly, capital is now beginning to return to rationality, focusing on companies with real strength.
Data shows that from January to August, out of 41 major industrial categories, 29 industries saw profit growth. Among them, the high-tech manufacturing industry grew the fastest and remains an important engine for growth. Profits in industries such as aerospace, smart vehicles, and lithium batteries all increased by more than 20%.
Looking at the companies on the ChiNext board: CATL, Oriental Fortune, Mindray Medical... are all industry leaders. New energy vehicle sales in August increased by 43.2% year-on-year, and exports increased by 23.7%. The pharmaceutical industry is also bottoming out and rebounding. The fundamentals of ChiNext companies continue to improve.
The ChiNext 100 ETF Huaxia (159957) is a good tool for investing in the ChiNext board. This ETF tracks an index composed of 100 high-market-value, highly liquid stocks from the ChiNext board, which can be regarded as the innovative elite corps of Chinese listed companies. It has a strong growth style, with significant characteristics of high growth and high elasticity.
On October 9th, the ChiNext 100 ETF Huaxia (159957) and its linked fund (006248) also reduced fees. The management fee rate was reduced from 0.50% to 0.15%, and the custody fee rate was adjusted from 0.10% to 0.05%, both at the lowest level in the market, full of sincerity in a bull market.Currently, the ChiNext Index's latest price-to-earnings ratio (PE-TTM) stands at 38.84 times, placing it at the 25.05% percentile over the past decade, indicating a relatively high value for money. Historical performance suggests that the ChiNext Index has also demonstrated relatively superior returns.
Wind data indicates that as of October 8, 2024, the ChiNext Index has risen by 27.27% in the past year, with a five-year increase of 57.76%, outperforming the Wind All A Index by 15.74% and 27.19%, respectively.
As of now, Huaxia Fund Management's ETFs have a total scale exceeding 700 billion yuan, maintaining the industry's top position for 20 consecutive years. With more than 90 products, it also leads the market in terms of product quantity. Its dual first place in scale and quantity makes it trustworthy.
Within Huaxia Fund's extensive ETF toolkit, there are broad-based indices with a growth style, including the ChiNext Comprehensive ETF Huaxia (159563), STAR 50 ETF (588000), STAR 100 ETF Huaxia (588800), and STAR Entrepreneurship 50 ETF (159783), among others.
Additionally, there are multi-theme products such as the Hang Seng Technology Index ETF (513180), Chip ETF (159995), and Information Technology Innovation ETF (562570), which provide comprehensive coverage of growth trends, assisting investors in tracking the market from various perspectives.