"Light" Explodes! Public Fund Performance Revealed After 100 Days, Track Battles Show "Ice and Fire" Extremes

The 2026 market outlook is about to cross the 100-day mark, and performance differentiation among public funds is further intensifying.

Based on the latest available data, the spread between the top and bottom returns across the entire fund market for the year-to-date period has already exceeded 92%. Among them, light communications-themed funds are leading strongly, while products heavily invested in the Hong Kong stock internet and humanoid robot (300024) sector continue to lag at the bottom. Sector investing is truly a mix of ice and fire.

“Light” themed funds keep surging in performance

In recent weeks, while volatility in the A-share market has intensified, the optical communications sector has strengthened against the trend, becoming a core track driving net asset values higher across multiple funds. Products with heavy exposure to this sector have seen a concentrated breakout, with net asset values consecutively setting new historical highs.

At the fund level, it’s not hard to see that this year, funds with performance gains ranking near the top in the industry—including Guoshou Anbao Digital Economy, Jinxin Quantitative Selection, Guoshou Anbao Strategy Selection, and Huatai-PineBridge Quality Growth—have all, without exception, held heavy positions in companies related to optical communications concepts. For these actively managed equity funds, their year-to-date performance increase has all exceeded 30%.

On the trading front, recently, heat in sub-sectors such as OCS (optical circuit switching), CPO (co-packaged optics), and fiber-optic sub-sectors has concentrated and burst out, with standout stock performances. On April 3, Dekoli hit a 20% daily limit-up; TengJing Technology surged 19.22% by the close. Core names such as Gungoku Technology (300620) and Guangxun Technology (002281) also rose in tandem. Within the CPO track, Loobotke (300757) and Yuanzhe Technology also moved higher in conjunction, and fiber-optic concept stocks such as Changfei Optic Fiber (601869) repeatedly set new historical highs.

Changfei Optic Fiber’s year-to-date share price increase has exceeded 2-fold; Dekoli’s has exceeded 79%; TengJing Technology is up nearly double year-to-date. Loobotke, Yuanzhe Technology, and others have also performed well year-to-date. In the A-share market, they have carved out independent momentum.

The secondary-market share price performance cannot be separated from support from the industry’s boom cycle. As global tech giants accelerate their deployment of AI compute power clusters, market demand for core foundational components such as optical modules and optical fiber and cable continues to expand.

Clear pricing momentum is evident at the upstream raw-materials end of the industry chain. Data show that in March 2026, the spot price of domestic G652.D naked optical fiber rose 165% month-on-month compared with January, with a year-on-year increase as high as 418%. The price-increase cycle is deepening further.

The industrial policy side has also received plenty of support. On April 2, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued the “Notice on Carrying Out a Special Campaign to Empower Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises with Inclusive Computing Power,” pointing out efforts to promote the deployment of technological applications such as OCS, reducing network latency from compute-power application terminals to servers.

Many institutions believe that in the medium-to-long term, the growth momentum of the communications equipment industry chain remains solid. Currently, the explosive AI compute-power demand is still in the early stage. The global wave of large data center construction continues to advance, which will, in the long run, support the upward trajectory of the prosperity levels of upstream core components such as optical fibers and optical modules. As stated by Tianfeng Securities (601162), it firmly expects the sustained trend of the optical interconnect sector (optical chips, optical components, optical modules, optical equipment, optical switching, optical fiber and cable). On the one hand, rising volume and high growth are driven by the joint ramp-up of 800G and 1.6T optical modules. On the other hand, new technologies in optical interconnect are flourishing (CPO, NPO, XPO, 3.2T, OCS, OIO, etc.). Optical interconnect will continue to permeate more deeply into the compute-power connection layer, enabling the entire industry chain to benefit together and opening up greater growth space over the coming years.

Public funds’ top-to-bottom performance spread exceeds 92%

The first quarter of 2026 is already over. At the beginning of the second quarter, the market outlook is not optimistic, and performance differentiation among public funds has further intensified. Overall, the top-to-bottom performance spread across the entire fund market for the year-to-date period has already exceeded 92%.

Affected by factors such as geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East, crude oil prices have continued to surge. They have led the advance among commodities, and QDII funds and commodity funds focused on oil-and-gas-related assets have achieved even more notable returns.

Among QDII funds, the year-to-date returns of Southern Oil, E Fund oil, and Jia Shi oil are 64.91%, 59.71%, and 58.08%, respectively. These have become the leading funds by year-to-date performance at present. All three are mainly oil-themed QDII funds investing abroad.

Since the start of the year, there have been large fluctuations in the A-share market. In terms of indices, the SSE Composite Index has cumulatively fallen by 2.24%, the CSI 300 Index has cumulatively fallen by 4.09%, and the ChiNext Index has cumulatively fallen by 1.67%.

Guangfa Vision Select, as an actively managed equity fund, has a year-to-date performance increase of more than 60.29%.

In addition, among actively managed equity funds, Guoshou Anbao Digital Economy, Jinxin Quantitative Selection, Pudong? (Pudong & P&C Digital Economy), Guoshou Anbao Strategy Selection, Huashang Zhiyuan Return, Huatai-PineBridge Quality Growth, Ping An Technology Select, and others have all posted year-to-date gains exceeding 30%.

It’s easy to see that light-themed funds and oil-themed funds together occupy the upper ranks of the performance leaderboard.

Meanwhile, with volatility in the A-share market, more than half of actively managed equity funds have had “negative performance” year-to-date. Wind data show that, year-to-date, the return of the equity-focused hybrid fund index is 0.24%.

From the performance of individual funds, performance differentiation is evident. The largest net asset value decline year-to-date is more than 27%. In total, 38 funds have suffered year-to-date declines exceeding 20%, including Hong Kong stock internet theme funds, humanoid robot theme funds, aviation theme funds, and others.

Fund managers see localized structural opportunities

Since the start of the year, although equity markets have not performed well and volatility has been high, many fund managers still believe in localized structural opportunities. They remain firmly convinced that what determines the stock pricing center of gravity is still the companies’ own profitability.

Yong? (Agrin Li), fund manager at Jingshun Great Wall’s stock investment department, believes that overseas geopolitical conflicts have temporarily increased market volatility and also created some disruption to risk appetite. He said such factors affect market timing and valuation fluctuations more in the short term. In the medium to long term, however, what determines the stock pricing center of gravity is still companies’ profitability itself. In the AI industry, 2026 is entering an accelerated development phase for Agentic AI. Especially in the coding domain, improvements in model capabilities and commercialization-driven value realization are forming a positive feedback loop. Overseas CSPs’ demand for compute power resources continues to strengthen, and high-value inference scenarios further increase the importance of network efficiency, system architecture, and hardware collaboration. With hardware optimization and technology upgrades around the inference layer, it is expected to become an important storyline for AI infrastructure in the next stage. He continues to look favorably at the performance realization capabilities and growth potential of directions such as optical interconnect and heterogeneous computing.

Liu Jiang, fund manager at Great Wall Fund, is not hiding his long-term optimism toward the AI industry. He believes the AI industry is still in the early-to-mid stage, making it a growth direction with continuously discoverable value. But he is not just broadly laying out “AI concepts”; instead, he digs deep into parts of the industry chain with high certainty, early benefits, and clear barriers—the “shovel sellers” in the AI industry, namely fields related to compute-power infrastructure. He argues that as the AI industry’s “shovel-selling” segment, the compute-power chain is expected to continue benefiting from demand growth brought by industry development.

Within sub-directions of the compute-power chain, Liu Jiang focuses on the optical communications sector. His reasons are not only that compute-power demand is growing, but more importantly that optical communications technology itself is undergoing major changes. He points out that from the underlying industrial logic, optical communications, as a key link in the AI compute-power chain, has an upward trend in long-term penetration. The development of emerging solutions such as OCS and CPO is being pushed by overseas tech giants, which also fully demonstrates the importance of optical interconnect and supports continued increases in its value volume.

It is worth noting that in investing, most fund managers choose to move with the trend—following the market’s mainstream and heading toward the direction with the clearest trend. But a small number of fund managers choose to take the opposite approach and position on the left side.

Chen Jinwei, fund manager at Penghua Fund who dares to take a contrarian position, is most bullish on the midstream cycle (represented by chemicals) and consumption healthcare with domestic-demand attributes. Chen Jinwei believes in the midstream cycle that benefits from “anti-overconcentration” and has significantly increased holdings in midstream industries represented by chemicals since the beginning of the third quarter of 2025. These directions showed some performance in the second half of 2025, but in his view, there is still a huge gap in expectations today. Taking chemicals as an example, there is an expectations gap in the market. Consumption and healthcare were the worst-performing sectors over the past five years, but Chen Jinwei has been bullish on structural opportunities in domestic demand since 2025, and he still believes it may be the sector with the largest space and the biggest expectations gap in the next five years. He judges that the current market is overwhelmingly not looking favorably on consumption, with a clearly irrational component; the inflection point may be right in front of us.

(Editor: Li Yue)

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