Quan Guo Fund's Zhao Yi, Gang Dengfeng, Sun Wei, and others have recently spoken out, frequently mentioning AI, energy, and consumer recovery.

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Cailian Press April 3 (Reporter Wu Yuqi) Against the backdrop of the reshaping of the global order and the acceleration of differentiation in industry trends, Quanguo Fund delivered a fairly clear judgment on the market’s main lines at its Spring 2026 strategy meeting. The meeting centered on multiple dimensions—including the revaluation of Chinese assets, the evolution of the AI industry, changes in the energy landscape, the cycle of resources, and the path to consumption recovery—and released its views on the market outlook in a concentrated way.

From the overall tone, Jiang Heze, the founding partner and deputy general manager of Quanguo Fund, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about this year’s market. He believes A-shares will display the characteristics of a “slow bull” and “structural bull,” with industry differentiation becoming even more pronounced, thereby creating opportunities for active investing. Jiang Heze also believes the process of revaluing Chinese assets has already begun over the past year. Although China faces both internal and external challenges, it already has global competitiveness in areas such as renewables, AI, and high-end manufacturing, and the revaluation process for Chinese assets will inevitably continue.

Discussions within Quanguo Fund’s investment and research team are also essentially built around this judgment: on the one hand, AI and energy are becoming new growth drivers; on the other hand, within the traditional frameworks for industries such as consumption and resource commodities, new pricing clues are emerging under the new macro environment.

Zhao Yi and Gang Dengfeng focus on AI and energy, while resource commodities are driven more by a “supply-constraint” logic

In terms of specific directions, Zhao Yi, assistant general manager of Quanguo Fund and general manager of the public offering investment department, lists energy and AI as the two most closely watched areas for 2026. He argues that the growth in electricity demand caused by the rapid development of AI is re-raising the demand for the total energy supply. Meanwhile, against the backdrop of geopolitical conflicts, the center of gravity for energy prices is shifting upward, and the importance of energy security is increasing. Going forward, the share of renewables in the overall energy structure will gradually rise, and the demand ceiling for renewables will further expand.

Within renewables, Zhao Yi focuses more on the lithium battery segment. His view is mainly based on two changes. First, demand scenarios are expanding: beyond electric vehicles, multiple application directions—such as energy storage, robotics, electric heavy trucks, and electric ships—are jointly lifting demand. Second, the pace of supply growth is slowing: the industry’s peak in fixed-asset investment growth has passed, and the supply-demand landscape is expected to gradually improve. In addition, after some leading Chinese lithium battery companies completed product certification overseas, they began scaling up production, which also increases expectations for a second growth curve.

When screening overseas companies, Zhao Yi emphasizes three key factors: whether management can integrate into local culture from a management perspective, whether they have capabilities for patent protection, and whether they have sufficient financial strength.

On AI, Zhao Yi highlights two main lines: applications and the construction of infrastructure. He notes that the rising heat around AI Agents represented by OpenClaw signals that AI is moving from the infrastructure stage into the application stage. What the market needs to observe next is whether truly “killer applications” will emerge in a meaningful sense. At the same time, as AI penetration increases, new investment leads are also appearing in AI infrastructure construction—specifically in areas where breakthroughs in overseas technologies are happening, as well as fields where domestic substitution has achieved progress.

Echoing Zhao Yi’s assessment, Gang Dengfeng, assistant general manager of Quanguo Fund and general manager of the research department, also regards technology and renewables as the two core engines for the current economic rebound. He believes that while recent geopolitical conflicts have heightened market concerns about the supply of raw materials such as crude oil, China still has strong resilience in dealing with such risks, and industrial chain links such as new energy vehicles and coal-chemical industries can, to a certain extent, provide a hedge.

For resource commodities, Gang Dengfeng particularly emphasizes that this cycle is different from the typical “both strong supply and strong demand” cycles in the past. A more distinct feature is “strong supply constraints + structural demand.” In other words, many resource commodity prices are strengthening not because demand is broadly expanding in the traditional sense, but because the supply side is simultaneously constrained by multiple factors, including policy, the politicization of resources, and mining cycles—then overlaid with structural demand brought by directions such as technology and renewables—making this price cycle more sustainable.

Regarding the “AI eating software” and “HALO trading” phenomena, Gang Dengfeng believes these reflect the market’s anxiety that, after three years of rapid development, downstream applications in the AI industry have still not fully created new commercial value. However, he points out that in the AI era, some internet industry leaders still have strong competitiveness due to their complete and closed ecosystems. If, within their ecosystems, they can leverage this wave of technological advances to build excellent application products, it will help consolidate their commercial position and further unlock commercial value.

Sun Wei sees consumption having potential to move from stabilization after a downturn into recovery; both baijiu and overseas expansion are highlighted

Compared with the high level of prosperity in AI and energy, the focus of consumption lies more on the recovery pace itself. Sun Wei, board-level general manager and fund manager of Quanguo Fund, said that 2026 will be a pivotal year for the consumption industry to shift from stabilizing after a decline to recovering. Since consumption has a strong post-cycle attribute, it often lags behind economic changes by more than half a year. Therefore, after economic data stabilizes, consumption recovery typically does not immediately show up in tandem. Still, based on some indicators at present, signs of consumption warming are gradually appearing.

Sun Wei mentioned that in the fourth quarter of 2025, some major chain shopping malls achieved positive same-store sales growth, and the operating performance of some luxury brands in Greater China has also become more stable. In addition, the marginal improvement in retail sales and inflation data in February has further reinforced market expectations that consumption will stabilize.

Within consumption, he places particular importance on several main lines with clear characteristics of the times, including emotional consumption, value-for-money consumption, and consumption going overseas. In his view, this change in consumption trends is not a short-term phenomenon; it is more like a mid-phase unfolding within a longer-cycle process. Behind it are shifts in the consumption outlook of younger consumer groups and the continued improvement of the competitiveness of Chinese brands. Especially on the overseas direction, as more consumer companies complete initial forays in markets such as Southeast Asia, 2025 to 2026 may enter an execution period, and the number of consumption companies whose overseas revenue exceeds their domestic revenue is expected to increase significantly.

For the baijiu sector, Sun Wei’s stance is also quite clear. He believes the industry has undergone years of continuous adjustments, and pessimistic expectations have largely been released. Active funds’ holdings are at historically low levels, and valuations have returned to relatively low levels. In a backdrop of not-high inventories and low market expectations, once positive growth changes appear afterward, the sector’s upside elasticity is worth paying attention to.

Qian Sijia and Hu Zhuowen: In a phase of higher market volatility, prioritize portfolio resilience and risk response

Facing the possibility of market volatility intensifying in the second quarter, Qian Sijia, board-level general manager and fund manager of Quanguo Fund, emphasizes focusing on relatively clear medium- and long-term main lines amid uncertainty. She believes that energy price fluctuations brought by geopolitical conflicts, inflation pressure, and the repeated changes in global liquidity expectations will all increase short-term market volatility. But from a longer perspective, the directions of energy diversification, supply-chain independence, and the revaluation of manufacturing capacity will not easily change.

In terms of the allocation approach, she continues to use the “high dividend + new momentum” barbell strategy. In the high-dividend portion, she insists on bottom-up stock selection, focusing more on companies with stable performance and steady growth, and on ROE that continues improving. In the new momentum portion, she focuses on the expansion in computing power demand brought by AI Agents and the opportunities in related industrial chains. She also notes that in the current market environment, compared with simply chasing return rates, it is more important to pay attention to product volatility itself, while sticking to the investment objective of “steady progress.”

In line with this view, Hu Zhuowen, an investment manager at Quanguo Fund, provides another framework for coping with volatility from a quantitative investing perspective. He summarizes the quantitative philosophy with two keywords: “explainability” and “diversity.” He believes portfolio management cannot rely on a single style or a single model; instead, it should coordinate multiple strategies such as value, growth, large-cap, and small-cap to enhance adaptability across different market environments.

On risk control, he draws on the “antifragile” concept, emphasizing that investors should obtain protection against extreme downside at relatively low cost. The core is not to run faster in the storm, but first to ensure the portfolio does not “sink” in the storm. Regarding the combination of AI and quantitative investing, Hu Zhuowen believes that AI is improving quantitative investment efficiency across three levels: code development, factor discovery, and model construction. However, the premise remains that the logic must be explainable and the outcomes verifiable.

(Cailian Press reporter Wu Yuqi)