Page 54 - Forbes - USA (November 2019)

INVESTING RETIREMENT

By Kenneth Rapoza Photograph by Jamel Toppin for Forbes

The Great Wall of Money

50

No matter how much Trump bellows, the Sino-American trade war will eventually pass,
and Asha Mehta and the smart quants at Acadian Asset Management will cash in on China.

On March 1, 2018,
Asha Mehta’s firm, Boston’s Acadian
Asset Management, announced it would
be launching a new China strategy, fo-
cused on investing directly in mainland
Chinese companies. Her timing could
not have been worse. Three weeks later
President Trump launched an all-out
trade war, vowing to place tariffs on tens
of billions of Chinese imports. It was the
beginning of a nearly continuous stream
of China-bashing from the White House,
which—no surprise—has wreaked havoc
on Chinese equities. In the 18 months
since, MSCI’s China Stock Index is down
16%, while the S&P 500 has gained 11%.
“China has been a hard sell,” says
Mehta, 41, as she stares out over Boston
Harbor from her Franklin Street office,
“but you have to ignore the noise. Chi-
na’s local market is becoming a net capi-
tal importer. You have continued market
liberalization.”
The novel quantitative China-focused
strategy Mehta is charged with lead-
ing has grown from $15 million under
management, in April 2018, to more
than $138 million today. Big investors
are pouring money into Acadian for
two reasons. First, despite the rhetoric,
China’s volatile equity market is finally

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