【英语中国】中国股市淘金经验谈

Late last year, Chris Ruffle, a British fund manager who runs $209m (￡136m, ￠164m) in hedge fund assets for Martin Currie in Shanghai, heard from his sources while roaming the mainland on company visits that “people were not worried enough about returning inflation”.

Mr Ruffle, who started working in China for a metals trading company in 1983 and joined Edinburgh-based Martin Currie in 1994, concluded that Chinese interest rates would rise this year. That, he predicted, would have an impact on China’s property market.

In response, he shorted large-cap lenders such as Bank of China and highly geared property developers such as Guangzhou R&F Properties that had been all the rage. But he maintained long positions in obscure stocks such as vegetable producer Chaoda Modern Agriculture, printer- cartridge recycler Jackin International, prescription drug distributor Sinopharm Group, and insurance agent CNinsure.

“I’ve got the strategy down to four words now: long obscure, short hot,” says Mr Ruffle, who has a degree in Chinese from Oxford.

As he predicted, banks tightened credit terms for property developers, fanning rumours that a real estate bubble could crimp China’s breathless 10 per cent annual economic growth rate – and sending investors scurrying into smaller stocks.

Particularly hard-hit was the small, secretive community of more than 20 hedge funds in Shanghai, which already had been sapped for two years by withdrawals by investors who had their own liquidity problems, according to analysts at Z-Ben Advisors.

But Mr Ruffle’s prescient moves cushioned the Martin Currie China Hedge Fund’s fall in a stock market that became one of the world’s worst performers this year. From January 1 to July 31, the fund lost a mere 2.78 per cent, according to BarclayHedge, while the SSE Composite Index of Shanghai-listed shares fell 18.69 per cent.

Following an investment theme that has driven the fund’s growth by an annualised 14.43 per cent since he launched it in December 2002, Mr Ruffle and his team of 13 analysts in Shanghai focus on A-shares on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. That affords a much wider variety of companies than the narrow range of H-shares of large-cap companies that trade on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange or American Depositary Receipts on the New York Stock Exchange.

Mr Ruffle mostly avoids state-run companies, which he considers inefficient. He shorts large-cap consumer-oriented stocks, which he believes are overpriced. Because it is against Chinese regulations to short A-shares, he uses H-shares to short stocks.

But A-shares currently make up only 10 per cent of the fund’s assets as some of the fund’s most lucrative long plays over the past 12 months were in mainland Chinese companies that are only listed in Hong Kong.

In September last year, for example, Mr Ruffle made an exception to his avoidance of state enterprises and made the fund a cornerstone investor in the Hong Kong IPO of Sinopharm, a large state-owned distributor of prescription drugs that was expected to benefit from a plan by the central government to spend about Rmb850bn (￡81bn, ￠97bn, $125bn) on a health-care overhaul. Sinopharm has risen 82 per cent from its IPO price of HK$16.00 (￡1.30, ￠1.60, $2.05) on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, to HK$29.20 on August 24.

“China is very political. It pays to put your feet into the shoes of the politburo and work out what they are trying to do here,” says Mr Ruffle.

Another fast-growing Hong Kong-listed stock in the portfolio is Jackin, the printer-cartridge recycler, which doubled from HK$0.19 to HK$0.38 during the 12 months ended August 24.

The increase was due to a takeover by China National Gold, which according to Jackin press releases needs to use a Hong Kong-listed company to invest in US gold mines.

Mr Ruffle has been managing A-shares since 1997 – five years before foreign asset fund managers were allowed to apply for a license to buy them – through a swap arrangement with a Chinese brokerage that has gone out of business.

“We deposited money onshore, and they gave us a return on the deposit equivalent to the performance of the A-shares I selected. Then they used their proprietary position to hedge,” Mr Ruffle recalls.

Nearly eight years after the hedge fund’s launch, Martin Currie’s fund complex in China – of which Mr Ruffle is the overall manager – is the largest licensed foreign manager of domestic Chinese assets, according to Z-Ben.

But the last several months have presented Mr Ruffle with a whole new challenge – simply getting investors to commit to their stated desire of diversifying out of the slow-moving North American and west European economies and into emerging markets.

Investors are wary, he says, of corporate governance issues and the volatility of the domestic stock market, which fell 65 per cent in 2008 before tumbling again this year. Mr Ruffle says he has visited pension funds in the US that have allocated only 2 per cent of their assets to China but still consider themselves overexposed.

“There is huge interest in China but no money. We have seen little inflow for two years,” says Mr Ruffle.

So Martin Currie has opened the fund, which had been closed, to new investors, with a goal of raising total assets to $250m.

The fund currently makes up $118m of the firm’s $209m in hedge fund assets in China, and the remainder is in a segregated account that is managed pari passu under the same strategy, he says.

去年末，英国基金经理克里斯?拉弗尔(Chris Ruffle)在拜访中国内地企业时，从他的人脉圈子里听到了这样的说法：“人们不够重视通胀回归的风险。”

拉弗尔据此判断：中国今年将上调利率，而这将影响国内房地产市场。拉弗尔从1983年开始在中国工作，最初供职于一家金属交易公司，1994年加入总部在英国爱丁堡的马丁可利（Martin Currie，又译马丁居里），如今在上海为马丁可利管理着2.09亿美元对冲基金资产。

为此，拉弗尔选择做空中国银行(Bank of China)等大盘银行股，以及杠杆率偏高的地产股，如曾风靡一时的广州富力地产(Guangzhou R&F Properties)，但继续做多一些名气不大的个股，如蔬菜生产商超大现代农业(Chaoda Modern Agriculture)，打印机墨盒和硒鼓再循环生产商辉影国际(Jackin International)，处方药分销商国药控股(Sinopharm Group)，以及保险公司泛华集团(CNinsure)。

“我如今把这项策略归结为10个字：做多无名股、做空热门股(long obscure, short hot)，”拥有牛津大学中文学位的拉弗尔表示。

正如他预料的那样，中国各银行收紧了地产开发商的贷款条件，从而引发了房地产泡沫可能会刹住中国每年10%的经济增长势头的传言，并促使投资者仓皇奔向中小盘股。

咨奔商务咨询(Z-Ben Advisors)的分析师表示，在这轮风声中，首当其冲的是上海的20多家对冲基金——近两年来，由于自身存在流动性问题的投资者纷纷撤资，这个隐秘的小圈子早已受到了打击。

中国股市是今年全球表现最差的股市之一，所幸拉弗尔有先见之明的做法，减少了“马丁可利中国对冲基金”(Martin Currie China Hedge Fund)的亏损。根据BarclayHedge的数据，从1月1日到7月31日，该基金仅亏损2.78%；而上证综指在此期间下跌了18.69%。

自2002年12月成立以来，该基金年均增长14.43%。拉弗尔和他在上海的13名分析师队伍所奉行的投资方针，是把重点放在上海证交所的A股上。上证A股所涵盖的企业种类，比在香港交易所挂牌的大盘H股，以及在纽约证交所挂牌的美国存托凭证(ADR)都要丰富得多。

拉弗尔认为中国国有企业效率低下，因此基本上都敬而远之。他做空大型消费类股，认为这类股票价格过高。由于中国法规不允许做空A股，他就通过H股来做空。

然而，目前A股仅占该基金资产总额的10%，因为过去12个月，该基金一些斩获最多的多头操作都是针对仅在香港上市的中国内地企业。

例如，去年9月，拉弗尔一反从不染指国企的习惯，破例让该基金成为国药控股香港首次公开发行(IPO)的基石投资者。国药控股是经销处方药的大型国企，当时人们预计，该公司将从中央政府涉资8500亿元人民币（合1250亿美元）的医疗改革中获益。国药控股在港交所的首发价是16.00港元，8月24日收报29.20港元，上涨82%。

“中国是个政治色彩很浓重的国家，你不妨站在政治局的角度，推敲他们打算做些什么——这法子很管用，”拉弗尔表示。

该基金投资组合中的辉影国际，也是一只涨势迅猛的香港上市股票。在截至8月24日的一年内，辉影国际股价从0.19港元涨到0.38港元，整整翻了一倍。

辉影国际的迅猛涨势得益于中国黄金集团(China National Gold)的收购。据辉影国际发布的新闻稿，中国黄金集团需要通过一家香港上市公司在美国投资金矿。

从1997年起，拉弗尔就通过与一家中国券商（目前已停业）的互换安排，运作A股投资事宜。而直到5年后，中国才开始允许境外资产基金管理公司申请A股投资许可。

拉弗尔回忆道：“我们把钱存到中国，他们按照我所选A股的表现，把相关的收益返给我们。然后他们会利用他们自营头寸进行对冲。”

根据咨奔的数据，在成立近8年后，由拉弗尔总管的马丁可利中国基金，已成为在华资产管理规模最大的持牌境外资产管理公司。

但最近几个月，拉弗尔遇到了一个全新的挑战：投资者说是希望收缩在增长缓慢的北美和西欧经济体的投资，加大在新兴经济体的投资力度，但如何劝动投资者拿出具体行动呢？

拉弗尔表示，投资者顾虑公司治理问题和中国内地股市的剧烈波动。中国股市2008年下跌了65%，今年又再度猛烈下跌。他说，他拜访过的一些美国养老基金只把2%的资产配置在中国，还认为这个比例过大。

拉弗尔表示：“投资者对中国兴趣浓厚，却不肯拿出钱来。两年来，我们很少见到有资金流入。”

因此，马丁可利把该封闭式基金转为了开放式基金，以向新投资者募资，目标是使总资产达到2.5亿美元。

拉弗尔表示，马丁可利目前在中国有2.09亿美元的对冲基金资产，其中的1.18亿美元属于上述“中国对冲基金”所管，其余资产则在另一个账户中，也采用相同的策略同步管理。

译者/杨远