Stay Ahead of the Curve
Our forecasting record is unparalleled in the China watching industry.
“a counterintuitive interpretation to go with their contrarian data.”
The Wall Street Journal
Correctly Predicting China’s 2021 Monetary Policy
Wall Street’s expectations that China would dramatically ease monetary policy were dashed in 2021. When stimulus never arrived, analysts’ exuberance quickly turned to gloom, catalyzing losses for their clients. Why did projections of big-bang stimulus fall flat? And how did China Beige Book correctly forecast consistently tight credit conditions and an acceptance of slower levels of growth?
Forecasting China’s Consumer Downturn in 2021
There was near universal consensus in 2020 that China’s post-Covid recovery would normalize beyond the industrial sectors in 2021, punctuated by a strong rebound in consumer spending. China Beige Book data repeatedly showed a struggling retail sector, however, and no prospect of a consumption boom. When official retail sales data soon fizzled out, markets panicked. How did CBB accurately forecast that the expected Chinese consumption surge was never in the cards?
CBB’s Flash Data Lead the Market-moving PMI
Since introducing our Flash Data™ in mid-2018—raising the number of CBB data releases to 8 per year—our market calls have been a succession of highly tradable, highly monetizable success stories.
“China’s economy showed “an unmistakable first-quarter recovery” after a weak end to 2018, according to the China Beige Book.”
Bloomberg
Predicting the Steel Price Plunge of 2018
In late 2017 many commodities investors foresaw a killer trade, expecting announced Chinese steel capacity cut reforms to smother output and jumpstart prices. Our data dispelled the notion that capacity, much less output, was actually falling. When official figures soon made clear that steel output was instead on track for a record high, our clients cashed in. How did CBB beat Wall Street’s best and brightest?
How CBB Beat the Street: Decoding Deleveraging (2017-2018)
A near-universal view during 2017 was that Beijing was actively initiating a corporate deleveraging campaign, following through on its pledges to derisk the financial system. This sounded great on paper, and Wall Street analysts bought in hook, line, and sinker. Yet China Beige Book’s proprietary credit market tracking showed no evidence of sustained debt reduction across the corporate sector. Ultimately, neither did official data. How did CBB correctly predict Chinese monetary policy?
How We Protected Clients From the 2016 Global Market Panic
In January 2016, a panic that first erupted in China wiped away $8 trillion of value from global markets. But our clients were well prepared weeks ahead of time, and able to position themselves safely. How did early, reliable private China economic data safeguard their portfolios?
“China’s economy was plagued by pervasive weakness in Q4, results from a private survey of Chinese firms showed, raising questions about the veracity of stronger than expected official activity data released this month.”
Reuters
Our Clients Did Not Panic During the 2015 Global Markets Meltdown
China’s “Black Monday”—which ignited a global sell-off costing investors trillions of dollars—was the result of this decade’s single greatest China market misread. But rather than contagion, our clients saw a rare opportunity.
“While China’s economy in Q3 was moderately weaker… it was hardly the ‘game-changer’ that prompted global markets to fall sharply, according to [China Beige Book].”
The Wall street Journal
How We Predicted the “Shibor Shock” Three Months Before It Hit
For investors tracking official credit indicators, the sudden spike in China’s benchmark interest rate in 2013 came out of nowhere. Not so for traders monitoring CBB’s credit gauges, who had been alerted to an impending credit crisis months earlier.