Taikang Fund's "Dual-Sided Investment" Fermentation: The Trust Rift Between Personal Gains of 50 Million and Major Losses of Retail Investors

Questioning AI · How does the Gu Yueqiang incident reflect the misalignment of interests in public mutual funds?

Written by | Yishi Finance Dongyang

Editor | Gao Shan

Recently, the “dual-faced investment” incident involving Gu Yueqiang, head of the equity investment department at Taikang Fund, has attracted widespread market attention. With 14 years in the industry, Gu Yueqiang heavily invested in AI and semiconductor tracks through accounts of relatives, with unrealized gains exceeding 50 million yuan since 2025; meanwhile, two public mutual funds he independently manages have both declined over 13% in the past three years, including Taikang Advantage Enterprise Hybrid A, which has nearly 30% total loss since inception. Both funds significantly underperformed the benchmark and their peer averages.

This case exposes the trust wounds beneath the prosperity surface of the mutual fund industry. Official data shows that by the end of February 2026, the total net asset value of domestic public mutual funds reached 38.61 trillion yuan, hitting a new high for 11 consecutive months. However, behind this rapid growth, the divergence between fund managers’ personal interests and the interests of retail investors may undermine the industry’s fundamental trust of “being entrusted to manage others’ money.”

1. Extreme contrast: Responsibility gaps under compliance framework

The core concern sparked by Gu Yueqiang’s incident is not traditional insider trading or benefit transfer, but a perfectly regulatory-compliant operation that significantly deviates from the fiduciary duty.

From the details of product holdings, Gu adopted a very low-frequency adjustment strategy: in 21 quarterly reports since the establishment of Taikang Blue Chip Advantage Fund, Luzhou Laojiao ranked among the top ten holdings for 21 consecutive quarters, with Shanxi Fenjiu and Wuliangye appearing 20 times; in 20 quarterly reports of Taikang Advantage Enterprise Hybrid Fund, Midea Group, Shanxi Fenjiu, and Yangnong Chemical appeared 19 times among the top ten holdings. Even during 2025, when the tech sector led the market all year, the holdings were almost unchanged.

In stark contrast, his personal investments demonstrated precise market insight.

Gu kept his personal investments completely separate from his public fund holdings, with no overlapping trades or inverse operations, thus perfectly avoiding regulatory red lines against insider trading and benefit transfer under the Securities Investment Fund Law, resulting in a “compliance in procedure, responsibility gaps” situation.

Estimates show that by the end of the first half of 2025, these two funds had collected over 130 million yuan in management fees since inception, creating a risk-reward mismatch where retail investors bear losses while institutions earn fixed management fees.

2. Behind the interest misalignment

The widespread resonance among investors regarding Gu’s incident mainly reflects the long-standing problem of interest misalignment in the mutual fund industry, not an isolated case.

An industry-circulated anonymous survey of 152 active equity fund managers shows that 68% of respondents’ personal accounts had over 50% allocation to the tech sector, while their managed mutual funds’ average tech allocation was only 28%; allocations to traditional sectors like finance, real estate, and energy in their funds exceeded their personal accounts by 15 percentage points. Data from 2023 indicates that the average return of these fund managers’ personal accounts was 31.5%, while their managed mutual funds averaged only 3.2%, a nearly tenfold difference.

This interest misalignment results directly in the industry’s chronic problem: “funds make money, retail investors don’t.”

Data from Tianxiang Investment Consulting shows that in 2025, the entire market’s public mutual funds earned a total profit of 2.6 trillion yuan, with stock and hybrid funds generating nearly 2 trillion yuan, the core source of profit; however, a survey by Shanghai Securities News in November 2025 revealed that although over 12k funds achieved positive returns that year, about 27% of surveyed retail investors were still at a loss.

Tracking data from China Asset Management shows that from 2020 to 2025, the average annualized return of active equity funds was 8.6%, but the actual annualized return received by investors was only 5.2%, meaning they only captured about 60% of the fund’s performance.

Investor trust continues to be under pressure, and a trend of “voting with their feet” has emerged. Data from the China Securities Investment Fund Association shows that as of February 2026, the total size of public mutual funds increased by 2.22% month-on-month, but the size of stock funds decreased by 1.38%, making it the only product category in the market to shrink.

Additionally, Wind data shows that as of March 16, 2026, 79 fund managers had resigned this year, including several managing over 386.1k yuan; by February 26, 2026, 31 funds had been liquidated, mostly triggered by long-term sizes falling below the liquidation threshold.

3. How to break the deadlock?

The core warning of the Gu Yueqiang incident is to push the industry to reflect on how to reconstruct the mechanism binding fund managers’ interests with those of investors at the institutional level, thereby repairing the industry’s trust foundation.

In response to the industry’s core contradictions, regulators have introduced multiple new regulations to optimize mechanisms.

On January 22, 2026, the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued, and on March 1, officially implemented, the “Guidelines for Performance Benchmarks of Publicly Offered Securities Investment Funds,” upgrading the benchmark from a “soft reference” to a “hard constraint,” clearly requiring that a fund’s investment strategy and holdings must precisely match its benchmark. Funds with long-term performance significantly below the benchmark should see their fund managers’ performance-based compensation substantially reduced.

Additionally, on May 7, 2025, the CSRC issued the “Action Plan for Promoting High-Quality Development of Public Funds,” explicitly incorporating indicators reflecting retail investors’ actual returns, such as profit margins and the proportion of profitable investors, into the core assessment system for fund companies and fund managers. In December of the same year, the China Asset Management Association released the “Fund Management Company Performance Evaluation Guidelines (Draft for Comments),” further requiring fund managers to allocate no less than 40% of their annual performance pay to funds they manage, strengthening the alignment of interests.

However, the author believes that to fundamentally address the industry’s interest misalignment, further institutional reforms are needed at several levels:

First, improve the rigid constraints on fiduciary responsibility, shifting from “formal compliance” to “substantive diligence.”

Current regulations mainly prevent illegal benefit transfer but lack effective constraints on “behavioral negligence within compliance.” It is necessary to clarify standards for fund managers’ diligent responsibilities, including not only compliance but also ongoing research and investment decision-making duties aimed at maximizing the interests of holders. For fund managers with long-term underperformance relative to benchmarks and neglect of diligence, clear disciplinary and market exit mechanisms should be established.

Second, strengthen information disclosure to ensure investors’ full right to know. Currently, fund managers only report personal investments internally to the fund company, without public disclosure, leaving investors unaware of the divergence between managers’ personal holdings and fund positions. The system should be improved to require regular disclosure of securities holdings by fund managers, their spouses, and related parties, and to change the disclosure from ranges to specific amounts, providing investors with complete information for decision-making.

Third, reconstruct the management fee pricing mechanism to break the fixed “drought and flood” model. Expand pilot programs for floating management fees, linking fees more closely with retail investors’ actual returns: when funds underperform benchmarks and investors suffer losses, reduce management fees accordingly, sharing risks; when funds generate excess returns, performance fees should be appropriately charged, truly aligning the interests of retail investors and institutions.

The 38 trillion yuan in public mutual funds are the core vehicle for residents’ wealth transfer to the capital markets. The industry’s long-term foundation is not measured by size but by the trust of “being entrusted to do what is right.” Only through institutional mechanisms that strongly bind fund managers’ interests to those of investors can the industry truly achieve high-quality, sustainable development.

Author’s statement: Personal opinions, for reference only.