Asia Centric by Bloomberg Intelligence

Chinese consumers are deferring smartphone upgrades into 2027 and beyond, casting a shadow over the world's largest mobile market. Despite industry hopes, on-device artificial intelligence and new form factors such as foldables are failing to excite buyers. Instead, rising memory prices are prompting users to hold onto their devices longer. Apple and Huawei stand out as the major brands growing in...

Asset allocation has become much tougher as the unwinding of the AI trade and rising interest rates ripple through equities and fixed income, breaking down traditional market correlations. With bonds struggling to fulfill their historical role as a portfolio safety net, investors are looking beyond conventional strategies to find true diversification. Adam Watson, Head of Asia Pacific at Partners...

The mining industry is undergoing a structural transformation. Copper has overtaken iron ore as the world's most sought-after commodity, driven by electrification, the energy transition and AI data center demand. Meanwhile, traditional commodity markets are facing a shifting landscape as China's steel consumption pivots away from a slumping property market toward advanced manufacturing. Vandita Pa...

China's share of global exports continues to rise despite US import restrictions. Rather than pulling back, the country is evolving from a "Made in China" to a "Made by China" model, supplying critical capital goods and high-value components to emerging markets such as Vietnam, Mexico and India. And after dominating the electric vehicle supply chain, China is now aggressively targeting humanoids a...

In a region where hot themes such as the AI trade dominate the headlines and investors rapidly rotate through markets, playing the contrarian can offer a distinct edge. Steering clear of the hype is uncovering unique opportunities – from South Korean preferred stocks to high-yielding defensive companies in Hong Kong and beaten-down Indonesian equities – according to Daniel Rupp, CIO an...

Surviving the cutthroat world of hedge funds is notoriously difficult, with firms facing an average lifespan of just five years. Yet Singapore-based systematic quantitative fund Quantedge has defied those odds, recently celebrating its 20th anniversary and growing its assets under management from less than $3 million to $7.6 billion. Boasting an annualized return of 20.8% over two decades and a ma...

While global equities have surged on the AI boom, India's stock markets have languished. With concerns that the nation's large IT services sector is vulnerable to automation and job losses, critics have increasingly labeled India an "anti-AI" or "short-AI" trade. Santanu Sengupta, chief India economist at Goldman Sachs, joins John Lee on the Asia Centric podcast to challenge this bearish narrative...

Asia's private wealth industry continues to flourish. A Bloomberg Intelligence survey of 100 senior private bankers reveals widespread optimism for double-digit net new money growth, supported by mainland investors seeking diversification and emerging wealth from Southeast Asia and the Middle East. This comes despite new regulatory headwinds from Beijing, including tighter capital outflows and tax...

The global economy is structurally shifting from G7 dominance toward a G2 dynamic led by the US and China, yet international investors continue to shun Chinese risk assets. Even as China dominates global manufacturing output and expands its trade surplus toward $1.2 trillion, global capital remains heavily allocated toward developed markets. Are markets mispricing China's role in this new order? B...

Shareholder activism is surging in Japan, with 120 campaigns launched in the first half of the year, making the country the second most active market globally after the US. With a record number of companies going private and M&A takeover battles on the rise, activist investors are increasingly becoming kingmakers in securing maximum value for minority shareholders. Jamie Halse, chief investmen...

North Asian currencies – including the Japanese yen, South Korean won, Taiwan dollar and Chinese yuan – are trading at some of their deepest discounts on record, dropping up to 56% below purchasing power parity. These depressed valuations persist despite strong macro fundamentals, backed by massive foreign exchange reserves and their status as top global creditors. However, this valuat...

After decades of lagging behind the US and China in economic growth and innovation, Europe faces a stark reality: the era of cheap Russian energy, low-cost Chinese goods and US-backed security is over. Achieving strategic self-sufficiency will cost an estimated €14 trillion through 2035, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, requiring massive capital deployment across defense, energy, technolo...

While US tech giants such as Anthropic and OpenAI are monetizing at an unprecedented scale, Chinese developers are struggling to turn their technical progress into revenue growth. Despite narrowing the performance gap with US frontier models to just 5%, they face a domestic market flooded with nearly 1,000 competing large language models. This massive oversupply has triggered a brutal price war, w...

Global fixed income markets are facing fresh turbulence as 30-year US Treasury yields spike to 5.2% – their highest level since before the global financial crisis – amid policy uncertainty under Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh. At the same time, FX markets are on high alert following coordinated intervention by US and Japanese authorities to support the yen after it breached 162. With rate vo...

Memory chips have been the standout trade of the AI boom, but July brought a sharp reality check. Global semiconductor stocks whipsawed as investors began questioning the return on hundreds of billions in data-center spending. Market jitters deepened after Chinese startup Moonshot released its open-source Kimi K3 model at a fraction of the cost of US frontier AI architectures. Compounding these co...

Prediction markets are rapidly emerging as one of the fastest-growing asset classes in global finance. Driven by market leaders such as Kalshi and Polymarket, annual trading volume on real-world outcomes — from political elections to major sporting events — is projected to surge to $300 billion this year, with the potential to reach $1 trillion by 2030. But a high-stakes regulatory bat...

The disruption in the Strait of Hormuz upended global energy markets, but the feared catastrophic oil shock never materialized. Prior to the Middle East conflict, about 20 million barrels of oil and products flowed through the maritime chokepoint every day. Due to regional bypass pipelines, strategic reserve releases and voluntary demand reductions from China, the global system absorbed the impact...

Chinese consumer sentiment isn't collapsing across the board, but retail sales growth is projected to hit a four-year low. While big-ticket categories like home appliances and autos crumble under subsidy fatigue, highly resilient segments are holding ground, particularly cosmetics, luxury, and premium sportswear. In e-commerce, Alibaba and rival giants are locked in a margin-crushing battle over a...

A massive convergence of artificial intelligence, energy and security is sparking what is likely to be the largest and longest energy investment cycle in history, according to Morgan Stanley. Driven by the demands of AI data centers and a strategic shift from "just-in-time" cost efficiency to "just-in-case" resilience, more than $5 trillion in new-energy investments is projected for Asia over the...

What's driving Japan's historic bull market? And why are global investors finally returning to Tokyo after years on the sidelines? According to Goldman Sachs, it’s a rare convergence of factors including the global AI trade, inflation, corporate governance reform and an evolving macroeconomic landscape. The firm also believes a regime shift is underway in the market, moving focus away from t...

The rise of single-stock ETFs, especially CSOP's 2x leveraged SK Hynix ETF listed in Hong Kong, is reshaping market dynamics. The daily rebalancing of these massive funds is contributing to higher volatility in equity markets, creating new challenges for investors. At the same time, high concentration risk and narrow market leadership are fundamentally changing how investors think about hedging. I...

China is rewriting the global energy playbook, rapidly transforming into a clean energy powerhouse and emerging as the world's first "electrostate". While the Iran war has rattled global commodity markets, Beijing has successfully absorbed the shock due to a decade-long pivot toward domestic renewable energy. Now, it's positioning itself to reap economic rewards by exporting its green infrastructu...

China's property market is showing signs of life after a five-year slump, prompting some analysts to call for a long-awaited rebound. Price declines for newly built homes are narrowing, while transaction volumes are finally ticking up, particularly in top-tier cities. But is this a significant turnaround or just a dead cat bounce? Leonid Mironov, a fund manager at Gavekal Capital, joins host John...

Australia is emerging as a surprising beneficiary of new technological shifts, even as the country faces a growth hit from the Middle East war. Rapidly accelerating data construction is driving an unprecedented demand for copper, while battery solutions are fueling a massive consumption of lithium. Escalating geopolitical tension is also providing a powerful tailwind for rare earths as Western nat...

South Korea remains the world's hottest stock market, surging more than 250% over the past 18 months led by semiconductor giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, which together account for over half of the entire Kospi index. Fueled by the global AI infrastructure buildout, retail investors have poured close to $40 billion into the local market, sparking concerns about rising leverage and market...