Stock Take Pt 2 - EM Edition
Part 2 of the 🐿️'s 2026 annual Stock Take. Plus our weekly review of BUSHY™ and live Acorn trade ideas. 2026, Week 26.
In this week’s ‘Start the Week’ note we start with ‘Part 2’ of the 🐿️’s annual ‘Stock Take’ - covering China and other EM equity exposure - ahead of the usual portfolio reviews. An important BUSHY™-related email will be hitting inboxes in about an hour.
In case you missed it, the weekend flagship note contains Part 1 of the ‘Stock Take’. Check it out via the link below 👇:
Stock Take Pt 2 - EM Edition
2026 has been an unusual year for Emerging Markets as the main benchmark - driven by the chip giants of Seoul and Taipei - got swept into the AI capex trade.
China
China has been having its own AI party. The chip stack on the domestic SSE STAR Market has been going a valiant job trying to keep pace with the memory giants in Korea and also outrunning the broader EM index.
Offshore however, China’s traditional tech giants have acted as dead weight for the MSCI China.
We took action in early March to part company with EM tech laggards (‘Doc, my EM Tech is Sick’). By then, we in ‘sell only’ mode when it came to risk. As such when it came time to rethink the 🐿️’s Concentrated China portfolio at the beginning of May, we were in ‘window shopping mode’ only.
We exited 7 (mainly consumer) names and trimmed the names that we were sticking with (but at a lower weight). The ‘top-ups’ and the new adds were left in the post-Hormuz ‘pending trades’ bucket. Now what?