Chinese Quant and Long-Only Private Funds See Sharp NAV Drawdowns

Multiple Chinese quant and long-only private funds have seen steep net asset value drawdowns over the past month, with several products falling more than 20%, according to Jiemian News. Wind data showed Wembow Investment’s "Wembow Small-Cap Aggressive Timing Enhanced Index No. 1" had a cumulative NAV of 1.4332 as of July 17, down 39.24% from its June 26 peak of 2.3588, and 2.11% lower over the past year. Jiemian News reported that Wembow had eight products updated through July 17, all of which fell over the past month, while four other products dropped more than 20%. On July 19, Wembow posted an article saying its strategy is an end-to-end AI model that may buy into panic selling during sharp declines, but it said it would not assume the market has bottomed or reject the model’s long-term logic solely because prices kept falling. Other large quant managers also posted losses, including Quantdao, Sixiang, Mingshi, Abama, Hanyu, Black Wing Asset, Longqi Technology, Banyang, Mingxi, Ziwu, Nianjue, Pinghe, Shanghai Qianshu, Lingjun, Qilin, Monex, Ruitian, Torte, and Qianyan, with products at many firms down more than 20% over the month. Among long-only private funds, Xi Yue Investment’s "Xi Yue Steady Growth No. 1" fell 35.38% to a NAV of 3.0424 as of July 20 from 4.7079 on June 24, while Qushi Asset’s "Qushi Preferred No. 1 - Haomai Phase 2" dropped 35.38% to 1.428 as of July 17 from 2.21 on June 22. Wanfang Private Fund’s "Wanfang Progress No. 1" fell 31.62% and Wangzheng Investment’s "Wangzheng Win-Win No. 8" declined 31.97%. Jiemian News said the worst drawdowns were concentrated in the four weeks from June 22 to July 17, when 20 of 100 Wind popular indices fell more than 20%, mostly in technology-related subsectors. In response to the volatility, 18 private fund managers had announced share buybacks by the evening of July 21, totaling 763 million yuan, including 636 million yuan from 11 managers with assets under management above 5 billion yuan. Lingjun Investment, Pinghe Investment and Ruiqun Asset led the buybacks at 200 million yuan, 100 million yuan and 100 million yuan, respectively. The tech sector then rebounded on July 21, with the STAR 50 Index rising 10.73% and the ChiNext Index up 7.05%.