Thursday, June 28, 2012

Jim Chanos on His Big China Short

[From Maneet Ahuja's Alpha Masters: Unlocking the Genius of the World's Top Hedge Funds]

His Positioning:
Kynikos is short the property developers in China through the H-shares in Hong Kong as well as most of the larger Chinese banks, which the firm believes are going to need ongoing injections of capital, much of which will come from Western investors. The fund has been short an oddball collection of one-off Chinese companies, such as Chinese Media Express, that have floated issues in the United States. Chanos has dubbed casinos "long corruption, short property." But his overall short in China stands as one of the highest exposures he has had to a single theme. China is one thing he's betting against in a big way -- it currently stands as the highest exposure he's ever had to a single theme in the portfolio.

Chinese equity markets:
"So I think it's very problematic for Western investors to make money in the share market in China. Not only because I think the macro's bad, I think the micro's bad, too. You're basically being fleeced as the Western investor in many of these companies."

Chinese Debt:
"We estimated that China's total debt reached about 180 percent of GDP in late 2011. If we assume that China will grow total credit this year between 30 percent to 40 percent of GDP, and half of that debt will go bad, that is 15 percent to 20 percent. Say the recoveries on that are 50 percent. That means that China, on an after write-off basis, may not be growing at all. It may have to simply write off some of this stuff in the future so its 9% growth may be zero."

No comments:

Post a Comment