Networking events in mainland China very different from Hong Kong. People seriously talk about business - red and white wine mostly untouched most people drink orange juice or water. People are married and rarely hit on the sales chicks.

Have been spending some time in China talking with bankers, lawyers as well as common folk. Consensus is the economy is bad. Sell side telling me networking events unusually full of buy side people as they have nothing to do now.

People say economy was booming before COVID but it has recovered somewhat since the trough. Hairdresser measures this by less people coming through his luxe salon and fewer people at bars.

I'm wondering how much of the pessimism is relative to a possibly unsustainable boom time of 7%+ growth driven by leverage / real estate. It's possible things are quite good now at a steady state assuming things don't regress and decline again. Possible given geopolitics

Compared to the rest of the world, Chinese growth actually seems pretty good. The standard of living albeit being in the CBD of a tier 1 city is phenomenal. But not sure the Chinese know nor care.

Bankers are sceptical of A-shares given how many falling knives they've caught and false starts witnessed. No IPOs and no cross border m&a means the US firms continue to suffer. The CITICs and CICCs also not great. Is it because a lot of companies can fund with cash flow?

Had dinner with wealthy woman from Tangshan yesterday. She said the gangsters beating up the girl on video last year are still around. She says there's a lot of coal mining wealth which was paid out when the mines were closed for being too dangerous and the city is corrupt

Naturally she is a beneficiary of this corruption. She said middle class Chinese girls expect a 3 carat ring at a minimum which are 300-800k RMB. She said half of Beijing is middle class. Out of touch people are probably a reason why the government wants to clean things up.

YouTube is barely watchable these days with the advertising

“The weakest link in a chain is the strongest because it can break it.” An FX idea for everyone in this week's post. As it’s nearly Christmas… happy to give someone who likes and retweets this post a free month. lordfed.co.uk/p/the-week-ahe…

Russia should export wrestling, boxing and hockey coaches to China

If Argentina with Milei today is like Russia and Yeltsin, what stocks benefited post the collapse of the Soviet union?

Has anyone looked at short HK long china as a play right now? HK pretty beat and everyone going up to mainland on weekend. Real estate banks retail to short?

Read it before it plays out. Been a while since I’ve done it but I’ll give a free year to a follower who retweets and likes this post. lordfed.co.uk/p/the-week-ahe…