China quants making big cap bets weather turmoil

Blue-chip companies outperform on haven demand

“The mega-cap has done really, really well versus the small-cap – that’s probably the biggest performance differential.”

Jason Hsu

A group of systematic investors betting on large Chinese companies has emerged largely unscathed from this year’s “quant quake” that’s sparked turmoil in the stock market and a crackdown by regulators.

Rules-based funds investing in stocks like Agricultural Bank of China Ltd have weathered the equity storm as blue-chip companies outperformed on haven demand and buying by state funds.

In one lens into the opaque world of quantitative trading, a Bloomberg-compiled portfolio that makes long and short bets on Chinese large caps has gained about 15% this year, after posting the best month since 2014 in January.

It’s a different story for quant traders riding small-cap firms, who found themselves at the centre of the market sell-off.

Even after bouncing back from the early February lows, the CSI 2000 Index of small stocks is still down 16% this year, while the large-cap equivalent is just 2.5%.

“The mega-cap has done really, really well versus the small-cap – that’s probably the biggest performance differential,” said Jason Hsu, founder of Hong Kong-based Rayliant Global Advisors Ltd, which oversees about Us$20bil, including Us$3bil in Chinese onshore shares.

The divergent returns underscore how small-cap strategies have borne the brunt of the pain during the massive plunge in Chinese equities over the first five weeks of the year. Funds making small-cap bets, which had been in vogue after their 2023 outperformance, were caught off guard when the market suddenly shifted, prompting quant products with heavy exposure to trim holdings further.

Concerned that quant funds were exacerbating declines, regulators then imposed a slew of restrictions, including trading limits at the start and end of the day, along with caps on leverage and increased scrutiny of trading strategies.

The Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges even took the unusual step of freezing the accounts of a major quant fund for three days after it dumped about Us$360mil in shares within a minute at the market open.

Making matters worse for these funds, China stepped in to buy large stocks and exchange-traded funds via the “national team” of state-owned entities, leaving small caps behind.

The turmoil has drawn comparisons to the “quant quake” that throttled US managers in 2007 ahead of the global financial crisis.

“The ‘quant quake’ was, in reality, a result of over-exposure in the market to the small-mini cap sector, primarily affecting short-horizon quant strategies that had significant exposure to the space,” said Hanqing Tian, who oversees quant portfolios at Huatai-pinebridge Investments.

For its mid and large-cap trades, Huataipinebridge is deploying fundamental factors like value and quality.

Its small-cap portfolios meanwhile, are focused on short-term technical signals, which work better in a segment driven by investor behaviour and with little analyst coverage, Tian said by email. — Bloomberg