Zheng’s Epic Fail

If Chinese equities were an instantaneous barometer of Zheng Shanjie's success in communicating the Party's determination to leverage fiscal stimulus in the service of resuscitating the wheezing mainland economy, he failed in real-time. Zheng runs China's National Development and Reform Commission. Actually, Xi Jinping runs China's National Development and Reform Commission, but you know what I mean. When the NDRC scheduled a press conference for Tuesday, A-shares' first day back from the Golde

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6 thoughts on “Zheng’s Epic Fail

  1. Ahooga! Ahooga! Time to monetize any gains!
    FWIW, after one time several years ago, when I initially thought I was investing (but quickly realized I was gambling) in 4-5 Chinese education stocks and made 20% in a few weeks and then sold those positions- I haven’t touched Chinese equities.
    Mentally, I generally categorize H’s market-related posts in one of 3 categories:
    1. For long term/fundamental investors.
    2. For traders.
    3. For gamblers- For me, China is firmly in this bucket.
    GLTA.

    1. I googled “January 4, 2025”, to see if I could gain any understanding of the significance of that date in your model.
      Turns out that date is “National Spaghetti Day”. So, of course, your analysis makes total sense! 🙂

  2. H’s reference to ‘automaton’ raises a fun comparison to watch. We like to bash autocracies for just this sort of mismanagement – why announce you have huge news pending and then fail to deliver? That’s what happens when there’s a guy at the top who tells the team nonsense like “put a line under the housing crisis and make sure everyone knows” followed by “… but don’t spend too much …”. We’ll get capitalism’s chance for a similar fail Thursday: Tesla’s “We Robot” event has been pre-sold explicitly by Musk as having earth-shattering significance. Will he pull a Zheng? I surely don’t know, but if so, it will highlight the benefit that capitalism and democracy provide in containing those periodic human disasters to a smaller scale.

    1. Yeah, I’m expecting sell-the-news from Elon’s taxi unveil. Readers will kindly recall that I bought Tesla @$148.63 on April 19 and sold half that position on July 10 @$263.71. I still have the other half. I almost wish he’d wait on this taxi thing until it’s absolutely, 100% ready for prime time. Because we all damn well know it’s nowhere close currently.

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