Investor Education

China: An Investment Opportunity Too Big To Ignore

Published

3 years ago

November 7, 2019

Katie Jones

Since the implementation of the initial Open Door Policy in 1978, China has experienced rapid development—making it the world’s second largest economy in nominal terms.

In the next year, the country will move into the next phase of opening up its economy by lifting restrictions on the foreign ownership of securities, insurance, and fund management firms, and this will make the economy more accessible to the outside world than ever before.

An Opportunity Too Big To Ignore

Today’s infographic from BlackRock explores the steps China’s markets have taken to attract foreign capital on a global scale.

China’s moves are funding the nation’s next stage of growth, and are also creating new investment opportunities for foreign investors.

china investment opportunity

The China Investment Opportunity

Currently, foreign investors hold just 3% of total Chinese securities, despite the country having the world’s second largest stock and bond market globally.

As the onshore equity and fixed income markets open up, investors have the opportunity to gain exposure to more sectors, particularly those that focus on the domestic economy.

China’s large consumption base of 1.3 billion consumers is a powerful engine of growth, with consumer spending increasing to $4.7 trillion in 2017, from $3.2 trillion in 2012.

Ensuring Sustainable Growth

There are structural reform gaps that need to be addressed in order to ensure China’s growth is sustainable.

These reforms, which seek to correct imbalances caused by uneven economic growth, cover many areas of the economy. They affect the government, as well as corporate, financial and household sectors.

Some of these key reforms include:

Capital reallocation: Debt reduction and interest rate liberalisation
Income redistribution: Property, household and corporate tax reduction
Market regulation: Supply-side reform and environmental protection
Institutional framework: Intellectual property protection, and reformation of the hukou— China’s registration program, which serves to regulate population distribution and rural-to-urban migration

With 22 reforms currently in progress, the long-term impact is expected to be tremendously positive for growth.

Opening Up the Great Wall

China has shown great support for economic globalisation, and has already been making strides to open its markets to the rest of the world.

2002: Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) scheme launches
2011: Renminbi Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (RQFII) scheme launches
2014: Shanghai/Hong Kong Stock Connect launches
2016: Shenzhen/Hong Kong Stock Connect launches
2017: Bond Connect scheme launches
2018: MSCI announces 20% inclusion factor of A-shares
2019: Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Index begins including yuan-denominated bonds
2020: JPMorgan Chase & Co. plans to add Chinese government debt to index

These index inclusions will result in a substantial inflow of new investor funds. According to Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg’s decision to increase the weighting of Renminbi-denominated government and policy bank securities in the Bloomberg Barclays Global Aggregate Index could attract between $120-$150 billion in new investments into Chinese debt markets.

New China vs. Old China

China has transformed from an export-driven and rural country, into a global manufacturing and technology superpower.

Foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows into China’s tech sector have been rising significantly, and currently account for almost a third of total FDI.

China already has the world’s largest robot market, and the government is actively promoting the robotics industry with tax reductions and special R&D funding.

—Victoria Mio, CIO Chinese Equities, Robeco

China’s ambitious “Made in China 2025” ten year plan will lower its dependency on imported technology and make China a dominant player in global technology manufacturing.

An Economic Force To Be Reckoned With

China will inevitably face challenges as it proceeds to lead global economic growth. However, its changing economy is creating a new landscape of opportunity for potential growth, and may continue to do so for the coming years.

The continuous expansion of market access, combined with new policies that promote foreign investment, have helped improve investor confidence. If foreign investors exclude China from their portfolio, they risk missing out on the huge potential of this rapidly expanding market.

Related Topics:china investing technology economic growth globalization foreign direct investment

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Technology

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Here’s what investors need to know about the future of cybersecurity.

Written By

Marcus Lu

Graphics & Design

Sam Parker

Published August 11, 2022 • Updated August 30, 2022 •

Thematic Investing: 3 Key Trends in Cybersecurity

In 2020, the global cost of cybercrime was estimated to be around $945 billion, according to McAfee.

It’s likely even higher today, as multiple sources have recorded an increase in the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks during the pandemic.

In this infographic from Global X ETFs, we highlight three major trends that are shaping the future of the cybersecurity industry that investors need to know.

Trend 1: Increasing Costs

Research from IBM determined that the average data breach cost businesses $4.2 million in 2021, up from $3.6 million in 2017. The following table breaks this figure into four components:

Cost Component	Value ($)
Cost of lost business	$1.6M
Detection and escalation	$1.2M
Post breach response	$1.1M
Notification	$0.3M
Total	$4.2M

The greatest cost of a data breach is lost business, which results from system downtimes, reputational losses, and lost customers. Second is detection and escalation, including investigative activities, audit services, and communications to stakeholders.

Post breach response includes costs such as legal expenditures, issuing new accounts or credit cards (in the case of financial institutions), and other monitoring services. Lastly, notification refers to the cost of notifying regulators, stakeholders, and other third parties.

To stay ahead of these rising costs, businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity. For example, Microsoft announced in September 2021 that it would quadruple its cybersecurity investments to $20 billion over the next five years.

Trend 2: Remote Work Opens New Vulnerabilities

According to IBM, companies that rely more on remote work experience greater losses from data breaches. For companies where 81 to 100% of employees were remote, the average cost of a data breach was $5.5 million (2021). This dropped to $3.7 million for companies that had under 10% of employees working from home.

A major reason for this gap is that work-from-home setups are typically less secure. Phishing attacks surged in 2021, taking advantage of the fact that many employees access corporate systems through their personal devices.

Type of Attack	Number of attacks in 2020	Number of attacks in 2021	Growth (%)
Spam phishing	1.5M	10.1M	+573%
Credential phishing	5.5M	6.2M	+13%

As detected by Trend Micro’s Cloud App Security.

Spam phishing refers to “fake” emails that trick users by impersonating company management. They can include malicious links that download ransomware onto the users device. Credential phishing is similar in concept, though the goal is to steal a person’s account credentials.

A tactic you may have seen before is the Amazon scam, where senders impersonate Amazon and convince users to update their payment methods. This strategy could also be used to gain access to a company’s internal systems.

Trend 3: AI Can Reduce the Cost of a Data Breach

AI-based cybersecurity can detect and respond to cyberattacks without any human intervention. When fully deployed, IBM measured a 20% reduction in the time it takes to identify and contain a breach. It also resulted in cost savings upwards of 60%.

A prominent user of AI-based cybersecurity is Google, which uses machine learning to detect phishing attacks within Gmail.

Machine learning helps Gmail block spam and phishing messages from showing up in your inbox with over 99.9% accuracy. This is huge, given that 50-70% of messages that Gmail receives are spam.
– Andy Wen, Google

As cybercrime escalates, Acumen Research and Consulting believes the market for AI-based security solutions will reach $134 billion by 2030, up from $15 billion in 2021.

Introducing the Global X Cybersecurity ETF

The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (Ticker: BUG) seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. See below for industry and country-level breakdowns, as of June 2022.

Sector (By security type)	Weight
Cloud	28.0%
Network	25.1%
Identity	17.7%
Internet	15.0%
Endpoint	12.8%

Country	Weight
🇺🇸 U.S.	71.6%
🇮🇱 Israel	13.2%
🇬🇧 UK	8.2%
🇯🇵 Japan	5.5%
🇰🇷 South Korea	0.9%
🇨🇦 Canada	0.6%

Totals may not equal 100% due to rounding.

Investors can use this passively managed solution to gain exposure to the rising adoption of cybersecurity technologies.

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Investor Education

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022

In this infographic, we examine new data that ranks the top 25 countries by their default risk.

Published

3 months ago

July 13, 2022

Marcus Lu

Countries with the Highest Default Risk in 2022

In May 2022, the South Asian nation of Sri Lanka defaulted on its debt for the first time. The country’s government was given a 30-day grace period to cover $78 million in unpaid interest, but ultimately failed to pay.

Not only does this impact Sri Lanka’s economic future, but it also raises an important question: which other countries are at risk of default?

To find out, we’ve used data from Bloomberg to rank the countries with the highest default risk.

The Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking

Bloomberg’s Sovereign Debt Vulnerability Ranking is a composite measure of a country’s default risk. It’s based on four underlying metrics:

Government bond yields (the weighted-average yield of the country’s dollar bonds)
5-year credit default swap (CDS) spread
Interest expense as a percentage of GDP
Government debt as a percentage of GDP

To better understand this ranking, let’s focus on Ukraine and El Salvador as examples.

Country	Rank	Government Bond Yield (%)	5Y CDS Spread	Interest Expense (% of GDP)	Government Debt (% of GDP)
🇸🇻 El Salvador	1	31.8%	3,376 bps (33.76%)	4.9%	82.6%
🇺🇦 Ukraine	8	60.4%	10,856 bps (100.85%)	2.9%	49%

1 basis point (bps) = 0.01%

Why are Ukraine’s Bond Yields so High?

Ukraine has high default risk due to its ongoing conflict with Russia. To understand why, consider a scenario where Russia was to assume control of the country. If this happened, it’s possible that Ukraine’s existing debt obligations will never be repaid.

That scenario has prompted a sell-off of Ukrainian government bonds, pushing their value down to nearly 30 cents on the dollar. This means that a bond with face value of $100 could be purchased for $30.

Because yields move in the opposite direction of price, the average yield on these bonds has climbed to a very high 60.4%. As a point of comparison, the yield on a U.S. 10-year government bond is currently 2.9%.

What is a CDS Spread?

Credit default swaps (CDS) are a type of derivative (financial contract) that provides a lender with insurance in the event of a default. The seller of the CDS represents a third party between the lender (investors) and borrower (in this case, governments).

In exchange for receiving coverage, the buyer of a CDS pays a fee known as the spread, which is expressed in basis points (bps). If a CDS has a spread of 300 bps (3%), this means that to insure $100 in debt, the investor must pay $3 per year.

Applying this to Ukraine’s 5-year CDS spread of 10,856 bps (108.56%), an investor would need to pay $108.56 each year to insure $100 in debt. This suggests that the market has very little faith in Ukraine’s ability to avoid default.

Why is El Salvador Ranked Higher?

Despite having lower values in the two metrics discussed above, El Salvador ranks higher than Ukraine because of its larger interest expense and total government debt.

According to the data above, El Salvador has annual interest payments equal to 4.9% of its GDP, which is relatively high. Comparing to the U.S. once more, America’s federal interest costs amounted to 1.6% of GDP in 2020.

When totaled, El Salvador’s outstanding debts are equal to 82.6% of GDP. This is considered high by historical standards, but today it’s actually quite normal.

The next date to watch will be January 2023, as this is when the country’s $800 million sovereign bond reaches maturity. Recent research suggests that if El Salvador were to default, it would experience significant, yet temporary, negative effects.

Another Hot Topic for El Salvador: Bitcoin

In September 2021, El Salvador became the first country in the world to adopt bitcoin as legal tender. This means that Bitcoin is recognized by law as a means to settle debts and other obligations.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) criticized this decision in early 2022, urging the country to revoke legal tender status. In hindsight, these warnings were wise, as Bitcoin’s value has fallen by 56% year-to-date.

While this isn’t directly related to El Salvador’s default risk, it does open potential avenues for relief. For instance, large players in the crypto space may be willing to assist the government to keep the concept of “nation-state bitcoin adoption” alive.