U.S. stock QDII quota rarely relaxed! After a one-day "flash" increase, it was tightened again—what just happened?

Against the backdrop of tight capacity limits for U.S. stock QDII funds in the U.S. stock QDII quota market, a North China mutual fund under Huabei Funds “rarely” loosened its single-day subscription quota for its Nasdaq Index Fund, but tightened it again after just one day.

Some analysts said that the quota increase may be the company’s response to regulatory deployment of inclusive finance, aiming to ease subscription limits or premium issues caused by quota tightness in public QDII products; while the tightening after one day is because “the quota is still tight and can be sold out in a day.”

U.S. stock QDII quota “flash” for one day

On February 25, Jiasheng Fund announced that, effective February 26, 2026, it would suspend large subscriptions and regular fixed-amount investment for its Jiasheng Nasdaq 100 Index-based Securities Investment Fund (QDII). The restrictions apply to all tranche funds in both RMB and USD, with specific restriction amounts of 100k RMB and 14,410 USD.

This is the first time this fund has loosened its subscription threshold in the recent period; previously, the single-day subscription limit was 50 RMB or 7 USD.

Some analysts said that this quota increase may be due to the company’s internal QDII quota being partially tilted toward the public. As is understood, the industry-standard allocation ratio of QDII between public funds and privately managed accounts generally is 8:2, but some fund companies have higher private account proportions.

Meanwhile, according to regulatory guidance, fund companies need to optimize the allocation of QDII quotas between public products and private account products, generally tilting toward public funds. As is understood, the proportion of private account products needs to be reduced to below 20% by the end of 2027, and at least half of the adjustment tasks must be completed by the end of 2026.

The aforementioned people believe that the quota loosening this time may be in response to the regulator’s deployment of “five major articles,” especially inclusive finance, aiming to ease the subscription limit or premium issues caused by quota tightness in public QDII products, and to meet investors’ needs for diversified global asset allocation. During the transition period, if the proportion of private-account QDII does not decrease but instead rises, it may affect the fund company’s filing for new private-account arrangements and performance evaluation and assessment.

It is worth noting that on the next day after the above-mentioned quota loosening announcement, i.e., on February 26, the Jiasheng Nasdaq 100 Index-based Securities Investment Fund (QDII) announced that its single-day subscription cap was tightened again to 100 RMB or 14 USD. Some public-fund practitioners said: “The quota should still be tight and can be sold out in a day.” Data show that since its establishment, the fund has grown quarter by quarter in both share count and size. At the end of the third quarter of 2021, the fund’s size was only 24 million RMB, and by the end of last year it had climbed to 100k RMB.

U.S. stock QDII fund premiums still remain elevated

A similar “one-day flash” of U.S. stock QDII quota is not an isolated case. On December 9 last year, Morgan Fund’s Morgan S&P 500 Index (QDII) RMB and Morgan Nasdaq 100 Index (QDII) RMB issued announcements saying they would loosen the threshold for large subscriptions to 100k RMB.

Just one day later, on December 10, the large-subscription thresholds for these two QDII products were changed to 10k RMB, and on December 11 they were further lowered to 100 RMB.

Although there have been occasional fluctuations in the recent period, investors’ pursuit of QDII funds has not cooled off. At present, U.S. stock QDII funds are still a “severely affected” area for quota limits.

As of February 26, the single-day subscription cap for Easygo Global Growth Select, which holds heavy positions in the U.S. stock market, is 500 RMB; funds such as Guo Fu Global Technology and Connectivity (RMB) have single-day subscription caps of 100 RMB; and for products such as Easygo S&P 500A (RMB), Morgan Fund, and multiple Nasdaq index funds under Player Fund, the single-day subscription caps are as low as 10 RMB.

As for ETFs, premiums also have not disappeared. As of February 26, the premium on Invesco Great Wall Nasdaq Technology Market Cap Weighted ETF is as high as 15.76%. Products such as the Cathay S&P 500 ETF, Cathay Nasdaq 100 ETF, and Southern S&P 500 ETF also show premium levels of more than 4%. The risk warnings from fund companies are also “urgent again and again.” Multiple products have announced: “The trading price in the secondary market is clearly higher than the fund share reference net asset value; a significant premium has occurred.”

“A general case is that the market maker mechanism can usually smooth out the discount/premium level of ETFs and LOFs within a relatively small range. But for QDII-type products, since foreign-exchange quotas are subject to regulation, if the trading heat in the secondary market is high, it may lead to a situation where the primary market cannot effectively supply shares to the secondary market, which in turn easily triggers an imbalance between supply and demand in the secondary market and results in a relatively high premium.” Cui Yue, an analyst at Morningstar (China) Fund Research Center, explained.

Prospects may bring further differentiation

Recently, U.S. stocks have continued to trade with volatility at historical highs, but many fund companies’ consensus on U.S. stocks is: in 2026, there is still an opportunity for U.S. equities, but the market could shift from “broad-based rally” to “selective picks.”

For the recent sideways movement, Franklin Templeton Fund stated that, from a fundamentals perspective, among the companies in the U.S. stock market that have already released earnings reports, more than 70% have profits that exceeded expectations, and more than 50% have both profits and revenue that exceeded expectations, with the overall fundamentals of listed companies showing an improving trend. However, the Nasdaq/ S&P 500 indices have still not left the range-bound area, showing a high-level sluggish pattern, which may indirectly reflect that with high valuations coupled with the AI-driven paradigm shift, the market is highly sensitive to tech stock earnings and also more demanding about ROI prospects.

“Going forward, tech stock earnings reports will remain the focus; watch forward-looking guidance from upstream hardware and cloud providers, etc. As the breadth of earnings repair spreads, the gap in earnings growth between other sectors and the MAG7 may narrow, and cyclicals on a longer scale and small- and mid-cap may show relatively better performance.” Franklin Templeton Fund said.

Over the past half year, although AI technology investment has become a global focus, the rise in U.S. stocks has been limited. For this kind of differentiation, Jiasheng Fund fund manager Li Bohan interpreted: AI technology is reshaping the U.S. industrial chain; the moat of traditional software application companies may be affected by AI large models, and their valuations may also experience a trend-like decline. By contrast, the competitive landscape for AI hardware is relatively stable.

Li Bohan believes that the differentiated market in U.S. equities may continue. Among them, data centers are one of the core infrastructure components for AI, mainly including compute capacity, storage, communication, and equipment vendors. The financial reports for the fourth quarter of 2025 show that strong global demand for AI data centers is expected to continue through 2030, but the stock prices of compute-capacity leaders have not risen and may even fall. Li Bohan believes that because the capital expenditure scale required by data centers is large, the market is worried that short-term AI applications may not generate enough cash flow to support the construction of data centers; therefore, the market has differing views on the future growth prospects of compute-capacity companies.

Li Bohan believes that relative to compute capacity, storage and communication may be in relatively favorable positions, because their price per unit is lower and historical profit margin levels are limited. It is worth noting that improving computing efficiency, addressing technical bottlenecks of the “memory wall,” and accelerating the expansion of memory and communication bandwidth are key; their growth rate may be much higher than that of compute units. Sub-sectors such as networking are relatively early beneficiaries in the development of AI technology, because iteration of models, applications, and so on does not affect the occurrence of underlying demands such as storage and power supply. This segment often faces fluctuations in cyclical factors such as changes in capital expenditure timing and mismatches between supply and demand, but it usually has stronger verifiability of performance.

There is huge room for development at the application layer, but differentiation may also be more pronounced. The value of high-quality application companies lies in truly solving problems for customers, improving efficiency, and enhancing user experience, not using AI as a marketing tag. Therefore, Li Bohan believes that in the application layer there may be a situation where “short-term heat is high but long-term delivery is unstable.” Some scenarios have high entry barriers, strong customer stickiness, and high switching costs; others have low entry barriers, rapid commoditization, and intense price competition. Investors need to carefully distinguish the difference between “high heat” and “high value.”

Zhou Jing, a fund manager at Huabao Fund, pointed out that from the overall market perspective, forward P/E has already fallen from the 28–29x range in October/November 2025 to the current 24–25x, approaching the historical average level. Zhou Jing analyzed that behind this is that constituent-stock companies have maintained strong earnings growth, especially incremental growth brought by AI. Overall, U.S. equities remain one of the markets with the fastest earnings growth, providing strong support for the stock market.