Mutual fund spring strategy meetings are held intensively; public fund professionals discuss new market opportunities.

● Our Staff Reporter Wei Zhaoyu

Recently, multiple public fund institutions, including Fullgoal Fund, Everbright Prudential Fund, and Changxin Fund, held spring strategy meetings. Several fund managers, drawing on market hot spots, analyzed the equity market from multiple angles, including changes in the macro environment and the trend of popular sectors.

Public fund institutions generally said that the overall economy is expected to maintain steady operations, and that it is currently at a crucial stage of transition between new and old driving forces. This year is the opening year of the “15th Five-Year Plan for 2025–2030” (the first year of the “15th Five-Year Plan”); the first year of the plan is typically a window period for a concentrated rollout of industrial policies, which will bring abundant structural opportunities to the market. Based on multiple factors, public fund institutions remain optimistic about the overall performance of China’s A-share equity market this year.

Corporate earnings will become the core variable

In 2026, the direction of monetary policy in China and the U.S. remains a key market focus. Regarding this topic, Xu Wangwei, Director of Equity Investments at Changxin Fund, said that after the Federal Reserve opened the rate-cutting cycle, for China’s capital market, the external environment comes with both opportunities and challenges, but overall the impact is more positive. Even if the timing of the Federal Reserve’s rate cuts fluctuates, China’s monetary policy room has already been opened up, with ample room for expansion in fiscal and industrial policies. Faced with external disruptions, domestic policy toolkits and inherent rebound momentum are sufficient to support stable market operations. “Therefore, regardless of how overseas markets shake or encounter interference, starting from fundamentals and policy considerations, we should maintain firm confidence in the performance of China’s capital market and overall asset performance.”

Cui Shutian, Director of Stock Research at Everbright Prudential Fund, said that he is optimistic about the A-share market performance in 2026, and that corporate earnings conditions will determine the direction and structure of the stock market. In the past two years, A-shares have been a typical valuation-repair rally, but historically such conditions have never lasted for three consecutive years. In 2026, the further expansion space for valuations is limited, and corporate earnings will become the core variable determining the market’s direction. Based on historical experience, during the phase when earnings are digesting valuations, market style is prone to switching. This year, the A-share market is expected to shift from a single focus on tech growth to a “new-and-old forces dancing together” pattern involving technology, manufacturing, and cycles.

Fang Lei, Director of Equity Investments at Everbright Prudential Fund, cautioned that the biggest core risk at present is the global stagflation expectation, which is also the system-wide risk factor the market needs to watch most closely. If such a situation occurs, it would form a significant shock to the pricing of all kinds of assets. Market capital would rotate toward positioning assets with anti-inflation characteristics. At that time, the most worth paying attention to would be upstream resource products. Such assets directly benefit from rising commodity prices; they can effectively hedge inflation pressure and become a core defensive target in a stagflation environment.

Focus on the “price-hike trade” logic

Looking at this year’s allocation, Zhang Shengxian, fund manager at Fullgoal Fund, said that price hikes once became a core storyline in China’s A-share market, driving cyclical resource stocks higher. This year’s domestic and international macro environment is also suitable for a “price-hike trade.” As energy prices push up the level of prices, domestic economic indicators such as China’s PPI may turn positive sooner than the market expects. Based on historical experience, during periods when PPI data are rising, cyclical industries such as chemicals, steel, building materials, transportation, petroleum and petrochemicals, and nonferrous metals tend to perform better. With cyclical sector valuations repairing, market style may move from AI’s sole dominance to a dual-engine driving mode of “AI + price hikes” and “technology + cycles.”

In addition, Zhang Yun, FOF fund manager at Everbright Prudential Fund, also mentioned that value style’s return to generating excess returns should be taken seriously. “We find that starting from last October, the downward slope of U.S. Treasury yields clearly slowed and entered a range-bound period. This corresponds to a weakening of excess returns for A-share growth style, while excess returns for value style have improved. The market conditions since last October reflect the same: the value style has been rising from time to time and no longer faces sustained pressure like before.”

AI and new energy sectors are worth looking forward to

When discussing views on the technology sector, Cui Shutian said that AI is the core main line for the technology sector. The pace of the market will move from overseas tech giants leading related infrastructure construction, gradually toward application-side implementation and bottlenecks in the supply-demand chain. At the beginning of 2026, the token usage of AI large models will see a significant increase compared with the same period in 2025. Their application scope will spread broadly, with large-scale implementation in fields such as office work, finance, and customer service. Companies’ willingness to pay will increase, and the revenue scale of model vendors will grow markedly. Investment opportunities will expand from traditional advantage segments such as optical modules and PCBs to bottleneck segments such as power shortages, storage, and electronic components. For example, as U.S. AI data center power demand surges, power infrastructure construction brings investment opportunities such as gas turbines and diesel gensets. As AI demand transmits toward storage, upstream PCBs, and passive components, it will drive up the prices of related products.

Besides artificial intelligence, there are also many bright spots in the consumer electronics field. Lu Xiaofeng, fund manager at Changxin Fund, believes that 2026 may be a big year for electronics that are either more cyclical or more traditional electronics. “Since the end of last year, we have been able to see price increases in storage, PCB, including LED and passive components. Behind this, there may be three common factors. First is the supply side: similar to the logic of storage, the expansion pace is slow, and supply growth is limited. Second is the demand side: AI drives different sub-industries in different ways, bringing additional demand and orders. Third is upstream raw material price increases: last year commodities such as gold and copper—precious metals used as cost items for many passive components and electronic components—had pricing transmission demands. So this year, including storage, in many passive component and traditional electronics cyclical product areas, a favorable cycle may be on the way.”

Recently, the investment value of the new energy sector has received widespread attention in the industry. At the spring strategy meeting of Changxin Fund, Wang Yao, a senior analyst in the electrical and new energy segment at Changjiang Securities, said that new energy has undergone relatively large changes on both the fundamentals and the investment side. The core reason is that the overall supply-demand pattern has improved. On the supply side, policies related to “anti-overlapping competition” are being introduced continuously, accelerating supply-side clearing. On the demand side, the rise of AI and the pan-tech space has driven electricity demand. Against the backdrop of rapid growth in data centers, energy demand has rapidly surged. Meanwhile, policy support for the demand side is also substantial. The combined efforts of both supply and demand are the core reasons why this round of new energy market performance and fundamentals have changed and a turning point has emerged.

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