Japan – Subarashii Desu

Reasons to be cheerful

With mounting overseas investor interest and a stock market that is trading, in yen terms, at 30-year highs, we review our optimistic December 22 Japan thesis, Sugoi Desu Ne (enclosed). The conclusion remains the same. A once in a generation transfer of wealth from corporates to shareholders remains a multi-year investment thesis with attractive valuations. Critically, this is supported by the recent intervention from the Tokyo Stock Exchange (TSE) over corporate governance directive as the final piece of the strong investment story.

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Impressions on the Re-opening

After 3 years, China has finally reopened its doors to foreign travelers. Alice Wang, manager of a Chinese and ex-Japanese equity strategy at Quaero Capital, has just returned from a 3-week trip to China. In the following text, she shares her impressions, sometimes anecdotal, based on numerous meetings and visits throughout the country.

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SVB in default … What now?

A few lines to revisit the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) event in particular, and also the other Category IV US banks (banks with a total balance sheet of less than USD 250 billion) notably First Republic Bank, Signature Bank, PacWest Bancorp, and Alliance Bancorp.

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Asia – 2023 Outlook 

We continue to be cautious on the rest of the world ex-China this year and highlight our key themes ex-China recovery: we do believe that USD has peaked, and that more geopolitical tension as well as central bank buying will be good for precious metals. We also believe that some commodities, such as copper, are more exposed to a China recovery, and that commodities on the whole have suffered from under-investment in the past decade. For the first half of the year, we park most of our ex-China exposure in metals as we wait for better opportunities in the second half of the year. We have a few idiosyncratic theses scattered around the region, but we err on the side of caution as flows back to China can impact even solid companies elsewhere, particularly the outperformers from last year.

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China: 2023 Outlook 

This year may be starting off well for the Chinese market, but it is not starting off well for Mr Xi. People are quietly seething at the rapid pace of reopening, both on account of the lack of psychological and medical preparedness, and also – why go to all the effort of zero-COVID for two years if herd immunity is the only solution in the end?

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