Securities Times reporter An Zhongwen

　　The just-released 2022 fund’s first quarterly report shows that after excluding money market funds, the total fund size fell by 5% month-on-month, and the size of stock funds declined for the first time in nearly three years.

The Securities Times reporter noticed that while the fund scale decreased month-on-month, the Matthew effect in the public offering industry was significant. A small number of top funds accounted for the majority of the market, while a large number of other companies accounted for less than 9% of the total.

　　Although the top funds have eaten most of the cake, the expansion of scale also brings challenges to fund investment. In the weak market environment in the first quarter of this year, the difficulty of large-scale operations has become more prominent, which also makes position management, an effective means of hedging almost difficult. Shi Zhan, the head fund all lost money in the first quarter.

In addition, while some funds choose to control their positions to avoid large market volatility, most fund managers still maintain high positions.

　　Equity-focused funds have declined in size

　　Industry Matthew effect intensifies

　　According to the data of Tianxiang Investment Consulting, as of April 22, 2022, a total of 148 fund companies have disclosed the first quarterly reports of 2022, and the size of the fund market has decreased slightly to 24.79 trillion yuan, a month-on-month decrease of 0.99%; if money market funds are excluded, the total number of funds The total scale was 14.82 trillion yuan, a decrease of 5.00% from the previous month.

The total size of the fund decreased month-on-month, to a large extent because the equity funds with a large proportion suffered large losses in the first four months of the year, which affected the confidence of fund holders.

　　According to data from Tianxiang Investment Consulting, the current stock fund scale is about 2.26 trillion yuan, down 10.78% month-on-month; the mixed fund scale is 5.23 trillion yuan, a month-on-month decrease of 12.67%; the bond fund scale is 6.81 trillion yuan, a month-on-month increase of 3.51%.

The largest increase in size was the FOF fund, which increased by 9.74% month-on-month.

　　The total size of the fund decreased during the first quarter, which can reflect the current situation in terms of the number of fund liquidations, fund issuance failures, and fund redemption.

Statistics show that the number of funds liquidated in the first quarter of this year reached 41; at the same time, the phenomenon of fund issuance failure and issuance difficulties has become increasingly prominent. In the first quarter of this year, a total of 386 new public funds were established, raising a total of 273.8 billion yuan, and the issuance scale dropped by 74% year-on-year. %, the average issuance share of the fund issuance market hit a new low in the past five years.

　　In the context of the general sell-off of heavy-holding stocks, the performance of fund managers has become the key to affecting the size of the fund.

Judging from the performance of the "Top Ten Funds" in 2021 in the first quarter of 2022, 9 funds lost more than 10% during the period, with the highest decline reaching 24.83%.

　　In the weak environment of the A-share market and the fund market, the top fund companies have further formed a dominant position in the competition.

　　According to the data of Tianxiang Investment Consulting, as of the end of the first quarter of 2022, excluding the scale statistics of currency and wealth management debt bases, there are 8 fund companies with a scale of more than 500 billion yuan, accounting for 34.73%; There are also 8 companies, accounting for 20.17% of the scale.

These 16 top fund companies accounted for 54.90% of the market share, reflecting the prominent Matthew effect in the fund market.

In contrast, the remaining 45.10% of the market share is jointly occupied by 132 small and medium fund companies, of which 84 fund companies with a value of less than 50 billion yuan account for less than 9% of the market share.

　　In addition, in the equity fund market, which is the most valued by fund companies, the industry differentiation is also more prominent. Equity products are the key for fund companies to obtain rich management fee income.

According to the statistics of equity fund scale, as of the end of the first quarter of 2022, there were 3 fund companies with a scale of more than 400 billion yuan, accounting for 19.33%; 6 companies with a scale of 250-400 billion, accounting for 24.28% ; These 9 head fund companies occupy 43.61% of the market share, while the remaining 56.39% of the market share is jointly occupied by 139 fund companies.

　　Head funds all lose money, small and medium-sized funds counterattack

　　After the boom in the fund industry brought about by the A-share bull market in the past three years, the rapidly expanding fund scale has also brought challenges to the investment of fund managers.

　　Although head fund companies have a significant advantage in scale, the scale can contribute more management fees and attract more excellent fund managers to join. Some huge fund companies have even more profitability than many A-share listed companies.

However, in the weak market environment in the first quarter of this year, too large scale has become an important factor for many fund companies to lag behind in the income ranking.

　　According to statistics from Tianxiang Investment Consultants, as of the end of the first quarter of 2022, quarterly return statistics were conducted on 148 public fund companies (weighted by fund size after excluding monetary funds), and the overall performance of fund companies with a management scale of more than 100 billion yuan was poor. , are all negative returns, of which the Industrial Fund's quarterly return is -0.79%, ranking first.

　　In general, there are 134 fund companies in the market with negative returns in the first quarter, and only 14 companies have positive returns. Most of these 14 fund companies are small and medium-sized public offerings with small management scales, which are also ushering in the spring.

　　"The rapid growth of scale may bring investment pressure to fund managers." Zhang Long, chairman of the Equity Investment Committee of Bosera Fund, pointed out in an interview with reporters that the investment boundary may face some problems due to its large scale. The first is the difficulty of dynamic adjustment of the fund portfolio. Increase, it is difficult to gain profits from short- and medium-term industry rotation and company stock price fluctuations; second, the fault tolerance of fund investment industry allocation and stock selection is greatly reduced, and portfolio adjustment requires higher winning rates, longer time and higher transaction costs.

　　Why are big funds reluctant to choose the time?

　　It is worth noting that, corresponding to the selected stocks, position control has become an important operation for fund managers' investment this year, but why has position control become a difficult problem?

　　"Position timing can be done by small funds. Small boats are good for turning around, but large funds are difficult to time." A fund manager from Qianhai Kaiyuan believes that position control itself requires fund managers to have strong timing ability, but large funds are difficult to time. Most fund managers don't actually want to choose timing, and timing itself is very difficult.

In addition, when the scale of funds managed by top fund managers is getting larger and larger, it is even more difficult to choose the timing of positions.

　　Although the timing of positions is difficult, in the first quarter of this year, there are still fund managers who hope to avoid the sharp fluctuations in the stock market through partial position control.

According to the data from Tianxiang Investment Consulting, the overall position of hybrid funds in the whole market in the first quarter of 2022 has almost remained unchanged. Among them, the average comparable position of hybrid funds with partial equity is 68.47%, a decrease of 2.94% from the previous period; the average comparable position of hybrid funds with partial debt is 22.61 %, up 4.59% from the previous issue.

Combining the market conditions in the first quarter, it can be seen that the fund manager has a stable attitude towards the A-share market and has increased the bond position in the hybrid fund.

　　Increasing bond positions and reducing stock positions may also be an effective strategy for fund managers to deal with the weak market this year, which can be seen from the operation of the 2018 stock-oriented fund annual champion in the first quarter of 2022.

The reporter noticed that taking the 2018 partial equity mixed fund champion, Bosera Xinrui Fund as an example, the fund's total position of the top ten stocks at the end of the first quarter of this year was only 5.16%, compared to the previous quarter's top ten stocks. Positioning fell by 50%, which means the fund manager is likely to significantly diversify the concentration of its holdings.

　　At the same time, Bosera Xinrui Fund also significantly increased its bond asset position. As of the end of the reporting period, the fund’s bond position was as high as 85.32%, an increase of 4 percentage points from the end of the fourth quarter of last year. Funds also trimmed equity exposures in their portfolios.

　　Based on the core operation of position control, when many funds lost 10%, 20% or even 30% in a quarter, Bosera Xinrui Fund lost less than 3% in the first quarter of this year.

As of April 24, 2022, the loss of this fund product was only 3.32%.

　　"The best risk prevention effect may be the most direct control of positions." Shi Bo, chief investment officer of Southern Fund, pointed out in an interview with reporters that from the perspective of the A-share market during the first quarter of 2022, the more important strategy to reduce the risk of fund portfolios is positions. Control, but there are big differences in risk reduction strategies adopted in different time periods. For example, in the market last year, only one or two industries performed well, far exceeding the overall market. At this time, improving the accuracy of individual stocks and industries may It becomes more important, but if it is used as a general portfolio risk control, position control is the most important.

　　In fact, the above operational logic has been significantly verified in the 2018 fund performance rankings.

The reporter noticed that the top three equity-oriented funds in 2018 were Bosera Xinrui Fund, Golden Eagle Xinrui Fund, and Changsheng Shengchong Fund, with annual returns of 9.87%, 9.06%, and 8.31%, respectively.

In an environment where individual stocks are generally falling and fund performance is generally losing money, the core factor for the above-mentioned three funds to achieve the top three performance lies in the control of stock positions and a substantial increase in bond positions.

According to the regular reports disclosed at that time, the bond positions of the above-mentioned three funds in the crown and Asia quarters reached 53%, 96%, and 98% respectively. The large proportion of bond positions allowed the above three funds to avoid the risk of falling individual stocks, thus winning the year. Performance ranking.

　　Is volatility the "nature" of equity investment?

　　However, in a market where fund holders generally prefer to be aggressive, fund managers are reluctant and unlikely to choose position control, which keeps most fund managers from operating with high positions on a normal basis, albeit in a The quarterly period generally brings a loss of 20% or even 30%.

　　In the normalized high-position operation, fund managers obviously hope to respond to the market through a strategy of selecting individual stocks, although the short-term effectiveness of this strategy is not as good as position control.

　　So, which stocks are fund managers mainly picking to deal with the market during the first quarter of this year?

　　According to Tianxiang data, in the first quarter of 2022, the top three companies in total market value held by public funds (active equity funds) were CATL, Kweichow Moutai and WuXi AppTec.

Fund managers still prefer Kweichow Moutai and Ningde Times, with more than 1,400 funds holding these stocks.

In addition to Poly Development, the top ten fund holding stocks in the first quarter all fell during the reporting period, of which Wuliangye fell the most, with a drop of 30.36%; Luzhou Laojiao fell second, down 26.78%.

Since April 2022, the overall performance of the top 10 heavy-holding stocks has been weak, of which CATL and LONGi have fallen by 18.93% and 14.12% respectively.

　　Although not timing positions may face a sharp pullback, but fund managers' confidence in long-term investment has not weakened.

　　Zhang Kun, deputy general manager of E Fund Fund, bluntly stated in his first-quarter report that the reason why many investors fail is that they are too concerned about the current operation of the stock market, and the human reflex system is too concerned about changes, so that it is difficult to notice things that remain constant. .

Whereas stock prices are like the weather, always changing, elusive and difficult to grasp, enterprise value is like the climate, always changing slowly and regularly.

Although in the short term it seems that the weather is what grabs the eye and determines the environment, in the long term it is the climate that really determines the environment of a region.

　　The top-tier fund manager emphasized that despite the current market difficulties, it also provides a very attractive price for long-term investors. He believes that the free cash flow that companies continue to accumulate every day will be reflected in the accumulation of their value. And the growing enterprise value will eventually be projected into its market value growth.

　　"The volatility of the market in the past year or so has hit investors' confidence and began to doubt equity investment. In fact, large market volatility is the essence of equity investment." Wang Keyu, a star fund manager and director of investment and research at Hongde Fund, believes that when investing in investment On the basis of strict screening of the target, the risk of market fluctuation and investment loss can be distinguished only by the continuous extension of the holding time.

During the period of abnormal downward volatility in the market, it often means a better time for fund managers to buy; and when the market is surging forward, maintaining the necessary caution is also conducive to improving long-term yields.

　　Li Xiaoxing, a star fund manager with a management scale of nearly 50 billion yuan, has always maintained high positions. He also believes that if he manages large-scale funds, he can only identify good companies and good stocks, pay attention to the quality of the company, and choose the timing of positions. For reliable things, a considerable part of the timing of positions is related to luck.