When success becomes a burden, how does GF Fund's Double Star turn around?

Text / Dong Xuan Source / Node Finance

The 2025 A-share market is a carnival for the vast majority—over 95% of active equity funds in the market achieved positive returns, with the highest return exceeding 230%.

However, in this feast, GF Fund has played a “double-edged sword”: on one side, the birth of doubling fund products; on the other, the unexpected “crash” of star fund managers Wang Mingxu and Liu Geshong.

Wang Mingxu, a veteran investor with 21 years of experience, has six funds under his management that rank among the bottom performers in active equity funds; Liu Geshong, once a “champion” in public funds, saw his management scale shrink from 84.4 billion yuan to about 27.5 billion yuan by year-end, causing investors to feel the chill over the past three years.

These two seemingly parallel downward trajectories share a similar underlying issue: when market styles shift rapidly, past success paths become burdens rather than assets.

Wang Mingxu: The “Old Hand” Behind the Setback

In 2025, Wang Mingxu delivered his worst “performance report” ever.

By the end of the year, the six funds he managed independently posted returns between -12.5% and -16.31%, ranking in the bottom fifteen among active equity funds. Among them, GF’s Domestic Demand Growth Hybrid A returned -16.31%, ranking fourth from the bottom in the entire market.

This veteran with over 20 years of securities experience and 16 years of portfolio management suddenly faltered in a bull market. A review of his operations from Q4 2024 to 2025 roughly sketches the outline.

In Q3 2024, stimulated by the policy shift on September 24, Wang significantly increased holdings in real estate stocks, resulting in a 14.59% fund increase that quarter, ranking in the top 15.

But then the market rhythm changed: in Q4, he heavily concentrated on securities firms, betting on a “continued bull market,” but missed the mark; in Q1 2025, he reduced holdings in real estate and increased bank stocks, while reallocating to high-end liquor, again misjudging the market; in Q2, he chased stablecoin themes and increased holdings in city commercial banks, only to get caught in a downturn; in Q3, he re-entered liquor stocks, missing the tech rebound window.

“If I fall behind for three consecutive quarters, especially when my fund’s net value moves opposite to the market—while others are soaring, I’m retreating—it’s quite stressful psychologically,” Wang Mingxu admitted in an interview.

From Q4 2024 to Q3 2025, he experienced four consecutive quarters of losses. Under pressure, his operational adjustments may have been a natural response.

More worth pondering are the systemic factors behind his operations.

Node Finance noticed that the seven funds Wang Mingxu manages have highly overlapping top ten holdings—Jiangsu Bank, Sifang Jingchuang, Midea Group, Langxin Group, Chengdu Bank, etc., repeatedly appearing in each fund’s portfolio.

This “strategy replication” approach, while maximizing efficiency, reducing trading friction, and avoiding style drift, is akin to “putting all eggs in one basket,” leading multiple funds to share the same fortunes and misfortunes.

It’s somewhat awkward that Wang Mingxu’s GF Shengjin, co-managed with Duan Tao, focuses on stock selection in AI computing power and innovative drugs, and achieved a 13.93% positive return in 2025.

As of Q4 2025, Wang Mingxu’s management scale was 7.265 billion yuan, down more than 70% from the peak of 30.652 billion yuan in 2021.

Liu Geshong: The Transformation Pain of a Former “Champion”

If Wang Mingxu’s fall is a “sudden loss of speed” by a sprinter, Liu Geshong’s story is a “long downward journey” spanning three years.

As the 2019 public fund champion, Liu Geshong gained fame with heavy holdings in semiconductors. He then shifted to new energy sectors, continuing to dance to the market tune.

But after 2022, with the market style switch, he still maintained high concentration in photovoltaics and missed the main lines of AI and new productivity.

On Ant Fortune platform, by the end of 2025, Liu Geshong’s managed products generally underperformed the benchmark over the past three years.

Take GF Small Cap Growth Hybrid A (LOF), which he managed the longest and stepped down from at the end of last year. It suffered losses for three consecutive years from 2022 to 2024, with a loss of 16.0% over three years and 19.3% over five years by Q3 2025, both significantly underperforming the benchmark by over 40 percentage points.

This fund’s net asset value once surged over 125% in Q1 2020, jumping from over 4 billion to over 10 billion, attracting many investors at the peak, who are still trapped in losses.

Along with the poor returns, Liu Geshong’s management scale also shrank.

It peaked at 84.33 billion yuan at the end of 2020, but by the end of February 2026, it had shrunk to 24.991 billion yuan.

In 2025, Liu Geshong began to change his previous “hold on to beta” approach. In Q3, he significantly adjusted his positions: reducing holdings in new energy, increasing positions in military, healthcare, and information technology giants such as Zhaoyan New Drug, Xiechuang Data, Fudan Microelectronics, Cambrian, Torch Electronics, AVIC Chengfei, etc.

“Heavily advancing technological transformation at the national level with strong policy support will help accelerate the development of domestic computing power, robotics, and other new productivity sectors,” Liu Geshong stated in a report.

This adjustment paid off: GF Small Cap Growth outperformed the benchmark with a gain of over 25% in a single quarter, and continued to rise by 11.89% in Q4, earning 622 million yuan in profit, nearly catching up with the CSI 300’s gains.

However, investor reactions were intriguing: the fund experienced net redemptions of 382 million units in Q3. Perhaps trust needs time to rebuild.

Source: Tiantian Fund

Reflections on GF’s “Star-Making” Model

Wang Mingxu, an “old hand” who faltered, and Liu Geshong, a “champion” who stumbled, have different paths but point to the same core question: when market styles change fundamentally, how should past “success experiences” be adjusted?

In 2018, GF Fund launched a deep reform in investment research, splitting equity investment into value, growth, and strategy departments. By analyzing fund managers’ trading data, they encouraged high win-rate actions and discouraged or eliminated low win-rate ones.

This reform was pioneering at the time, helping Liu Geshong win the championship in 2019, Zheng Chengran take second place in 2020, and Lin Yingrui rise to prominence in 2021.

But this model also fostered a “track-focused” tendency among fund managers—seeking prominence meant increasing industry concentration and sharpening product focus. When market styles align, it’s a star-making tool; when styles shift, adjusting becomes more difficult.

Moreover, GF’s “high-position fund launches” are also noteworthy.

Among Wang Mingxu’s eight current funds, five were established during the high market points of 2020-2021. Liu Geshong’s funds also saw large inflows at high points in 2020.

These “top-born” products are vulnerable to deep losses when market conditions suddenly turn downward.

Further, this operational logic creates not only investor losses but also misaligned利益结构。

In the first half of 2025, Wang Mingxu’s six losing funds collectively lost 677 million yuan, yet contributed over 55 million yuan in management fees to GF Fund.

From 2020 to 2024, GF Fund’s employee shareholding platform distributed about 647 million yuan in dividends, with Wang Mingxu as a shareholder receiving several million yuan.

Notably, in September and December 2025, Liu Geshong stepped down as fund manager of GF Multi-Asset Emerging Stocks and GF Small Cap Growth. Officially, it was “work arrangements” and “normal adjustments,” but under regulatory requirements that performance of funds with three-year underperformance exceeding 10% and negative profits must see at least a 30% reduction in performance-based pay, there may be other reasons behind these changes.

In 2026, the public fund industry’s reform continues to deepen. As market style shifts accelerate and investor expectations fluctuate, fund companies may need to focus less on creating the next star and more on building a resilient, cycle-through investment research system.

After all, in investing, no one can always hit the right rhythm. The key is whether, when the rhythm is off, one can find the right adjustment direction in time.

Cover image generated by AI