A bad week or two won’t unravel longer-term uptrends.
That’s how two market analysts are approaching the recent collapse in Chinese technology plays, under pressure from forced liquidations at multibillion-dollar investment firm Archegos Capital Management and threats of federal regulation.
Chinese internet names including Tencent, Baidu, iQiyi and Vipshop — all of which are holdings in the popular KraneShares CSI China Internet ETF (KWEB) — were impacted by Archegos’ move. U.S. media stocks ViacomCBS and Discovery also saw sizable drawdowns.
Even so, KWEB is up nearly 100% since the end of 2018, KraneShares chief investment officer Brendan Ahern told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” on Monday. The latest decline puts it down just 3% year to date.
“Ultimately, we’re just right back to where we were at the beginning of the year,” Ahern said. “We had a very outsized move and unfortunately we’ve given some of that back. But we’re very optimistic on the long and medium term on the KWEB companies.”
Like the container ship that was pulled free from the Suez Canal on Monday, Chinese investments are inherently unpredictable, ETF Trends and ETF Database CEO Tom Lydon said in the same “ETF Edge” interview.
“You never know what’s going to happen,” he said. “Last week was a bad week for saber-rattling between the U.S. and China. [President Joe] Biden was pretty open about making sure we had fair competition. China’s got a lot of pressure on companies to do well and they want their skin in the game.”
Tough trade talk may not be enough to knock Chinese tech companies off their long-term trajectories, however, the CEO said.
“These stocks are not going away,” Lydon said. “They’re some of the most innovative companies in the world right now and they’re not going to slow down. So, it’s definitely a buying opportunity.”
KWEB closed nearly 2% lower on Monday.
