Zhang Kun, Zhu Shaoxing, Ge Lan, etc., what do "national" fund managers look like?

Text/Cheng Jiming

Excellent fund managers can be called "national treasures". So, Zhang Kun, Zhu Shaoxing, Ge Lan, Xie Zhiyu... what are the unique characteristics of the current outstanding fund managers? Let’s see if it can help us select outstanding funds more scientifically.

The length of working experience is the primary criterion for testing the excellence of a fund manager.

That is how many years he has been a fund manager. Of course, the longer the better, at least more than 6 years, preferably more than 8 years.

This is mainly because the Chinese stock market has a cycle of 6 to 7 years. The last bull market was 2014-2015, and it has been 6 to 7 years now. Pushing forward further, from 2006 to 2007, it has been 14 years. It is unscientific to judge a fund manager as excellent simply by relying on short-term performance and good short-term performance.

Of course, this does not mean that there are no outstanding fund managers with less than 6 years of experience. Mainly because if a fund manager has more than 6 years of experience and has gone through the bull and bear cycles, then the "gold content" of his performance will be very high.

From this point of view, Zhu Shaoxing best meets the standards of an excellent fund manager. He has been working in Wells Fargo for 15 years and has no intention of breaking up now. This shows signs of "growing old together".

In addition, Zhang Kun and Xie Zhiyu have both been in the industry for more than 8 years.

And the goddess of medicine Gulen has been working at the China-Europe Fund for 5.9 years, which is close to this standard.

There is no doubt that the purpose of all investments is performance, and this is the first and most deserved criterion. However, when we evaluate the performance of fund managers, we must not look at the short-term perspective, but look at the long-term performance, and at least examine their investment performance for more than 6 years.

From the perspective of performance standards, it is best to choose a fund manager with an average annual return of more than 15%. In fact, the annualized performance of many outstanding fund managers is as high as 20% or more, or even higher. Especially with such high performance lasting more than 10 years, even Buffett may be amazed.

As of today, we have selected 10 relatively outstanding fund managers whose years of experience and performance are as follows:

1. Zhu Shaoxing of Fuguo, who has been in the industry for 15.6 years and has only managed one fund so far: Fuguo Tian Hui's growth is mixed, with a return of 2161%, which is a masterpiece.

2. Dong Chengfei of Industrial Securities Fund has been in the industry for 14 years. During his tenure, the best fund return was 360.14% in 8 years.

3. Invesco Great Wall Liu Yanchun, who has been in the industry for 12.1 years, has a 303% return on Invesco Great Wall Emerging Growth Mix in 6 years.

4. Zhang Kun of E Fund has been in business for 8.7 years and has achieved 800% profit in 8 years. The representative work of E Fund is small and medium-cap mixed. It was founded 13 years ago and its net worth increased by 1027%. However, Zhang Kun took over the management from the middle.

5. Xie Zhiyu of Xingquan Fund has been in the industry for more than 8 years, and Xingquan Herun has achieved 1000% for 7 years.

6. E Fund Xiao Nan, the best fund return during his tenure was 526.34% in 8 years.

7. Liu Gesong of Guangfa Fund has been in the industry for 7 years. During his tenure, the best fund return was 280.33% for more than 2 years. It should be noted that Liu Gesong’s previous performance in other funds such as China Post Fund was average.

8. Sino-European Fund Gulen, who has been in the industry for nearly 6 years, has a Sino-European medical and health mix of 335%.

9. Jiao Wei of Yinhua Fund has been in the industry for nearly 6 years. During his tenure, the best fund return was 264.40% in 2 and a half years. But the performance in Dacheng and Ping An was mediocre before.

10. China China Universal Hu Xinwei has been in the industry for 5 years, and the best fund return during his tenure was 317.60% in 5 years.

The above-mentioned annualization is compound interest, and the interest is compounded. For example, Zhu Shaoxing bought 100,000 yuan 15 years ago, and now it has become 2 million, which is 20 times without leverage. This yield is higher than that of houses in first-tier cities.

In general, the performance of these excellent fund managers is incredible. I guess Buffett was surprised after reading it. You must know that this is the soil for a rapidly growing Chinese capital market to have such amazing performance.

The so-called retracement means that when the fund is rising, it suddenly makes a U-turn, and the magnitude of the U-turn is not small. It is estimated that the citizens who entered the city at the beginning of this year still have fresh memories, and they are full of expectations to continue the pre-Spring Festival market after the Spring Festival. But contrary to expectations, major star funds suddenly turned downward, and the net value of funds fell back by more than 20%. For a time, Christians were filled with complaints.

In fact, retracement is a normal thing for funds. How can there be a fund that only rises but never falls? But there are two points that you must pay attention to:

First, excellent funds are not afraid of retracements, because excellent fund managers must have experienced market testing and will rise back sooner or later. It is a pity that many A-share investors have turned fund investment into stock investment, chasing the rise and killing the fall. They all redeemed themselves during the retracement. Now it seems that many excellent funds have returned to historical highs or even set new historical highs.

Second, the magnitude of retracement is also one of the criteria for testing the excellence of a fund. The smaller the retracement, the better. It is best not to retrace, but that is unrealistic.

Looking back at the retracement of national treasure-level fund managers, Zhu Shaoxing’s largest retracement was in 2008, with a retracement of nearly 60%; in the first half of 2015, the retracement was about 45%; in 2018, the retracement was 38%; at the beginning of 2021, the retracement was less than 15%. Did you see that? An excellent fund manager grows up slowly in this way, and the range of drawdowns gradually decreases.

Looking at Zhang Kun, the retracement was about 30% in 2015; it was almost 30% in 2018; and at the beginning of 2021, the retracement was less than 25%.

The core competitiveness of a fund is the fund manager. The essence of buying a fund is to "vote" the fund manager with your funds.

Christian people will entrust you with money to manage. Whether you make a profit or lose money, Christian people will have to pay a certain management fee. Unkind fund managers always focus on expanding the scale of management, such as launching new funds at high prices and then suffering huge losses as soon as they buy them. This is a typical type of unscrupulous funds.

On the contrary, conscientious fund managers always think about Christians at all times and "dissuade" Christians from buying when the stock market is at a high level. Of course, people's "discourage" is not done through a loudspeaker, but through "purchase restrictions."

Take Zhang Kun as an example.

At the beginning of 2020, the epidemic broke out and people were panicked. However, Zhang Kun issued an announcement on February 10, 2020, that his fund purchase limit was relaxed from the original 100,000 to 1 million. How much courage it takes to practice "Be greedy when others are fearful" with practical actions. In the end, the stock market basically rose all the way.

After rising in September and fluctuating sideways, Zhang Kun issued another announcement, lowering the fund purchase limit to 50,000 yuan. It means, I want to make a risk warning.

Then, on November 23, 2020, the purchase limit is 5,000 yuan. On December 28, the purchase limit is 2,000 yuan. On February 10, 2021, the purchase limit is 1,000 yuan. On February 24, 2021, purchases will be completely restricted.

Other fund managers, taking advantage of the crazy stock market, are even crazier than the stock market, working hard to launch new funds, and even "see the light of day".

At this time, excellent fund managers used practical actions to remind that "the stock market is risky, and investment needs to be cautious."

Zhu Shaoxing and Xie Zhiyu also used practical actions to practice their professional ethics and conscience.

Excellent people must have reasons for being excellent. Among them, good style is a very important quality that determines whether you can become a good manager.

Buffett, Peter Lynch, Soros, these well-known investment masters, all have their own ways of success. Judging from the investment style of the above-mentioned national fund managers, they more or less follow the logic of these masters.

According to Buffett, investment should be concentrated. The best way to outperform the market is not to hoard hundreds of stocks and wait patiently for the few stocks that are most likely to deliver outsized returns. As Fisher said, putting eggs in different baskets is a mistake because you can't keep track of all the eggs in each basket. Therefore, investors run the risk of investing too little in familiar companies and too much in unfamiliar ones. Zhang Kun is such a fund manager. The positions are very concentrated, such as the leading liquor stocks with heavy positions.

Buffett said that compound interest is great. "Mr. Market" is moody, so be prepared to hold for the long term.

From this point of view, Zhang Kun and Zhu Shaoxing are the same. They will not take the initiative to choose the time. As long as they recognize the company, they will firmly hold it and will not judge the rise or fall of the stock market too much.

But Zhu Shaoxing is the fund manager most like Peter Lynch in China. His positions are relatively diversified and he pays more attention to portfolio risk control.

As Guo Shuqing said, inflation is coming as expected. Moreover, inflation may last longer than all experts predict. The most frightening thing is that once the world enters a rate hike cycle, the economy will face a severe and long-term "stagflation" situation. If ordinary investors want to stay in the middle class, it is imperative and urgent to allocate high-quality assets. Leading funds controlled by outstanding national fund managers are undoubtedly the first choice for ordinary investors.