Animal Spirits Podcast - Talk Your Book: The Bull Case for China With Brendan Ahern

Episode Date: January 12, 2026

On this episode of Animal Spirits: Talk Your Book, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Michael Batnick⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠��⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ben Carlson⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ are joined by Brendan Ahern from KraneShares to discuss: the differences between China and the United States, the state of Chinese Internet stocks and more. Find complete show notes on our blogs... Ben Carlson’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠A Wealth of Common Sense⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Michael Batnick’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Irrelevant Investor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Feel free to shoot us an email at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ with any feedback, questions, recommendations, or ideas for future topics of conversation. Check out the latest in financial blogger fashion at The Compound shop: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://idontshop.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Investing involves the risk of loss. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be or regarded as personalized investment advice or relied upon for investment decisions. Michael Batnick and Ben Carlson are employees of Ritholtz Wealth Management and may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this video. All opinions expressed by them are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ritholtz Wealth Management. See our disclosures here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/podcast-youtube-disclosures/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ The Compound Media, Incorporated, an affiliate of ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ritholtz Wealth Management⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, receives payment from various entities for advertisements in affiliated podcasts, blogs and emails. Inclusion of such advertisements does not constitute or imply endorsement, sponsorship or recommendation thereof, or any affiliation therewith, by the Content Creator or by Ritholtz Wealth Management or any of its employees. For additional advertisement disclaimers see here ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://ritholtzwealth.com/advertising-disclaimers⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's Animal Spirits Talk Your Book is brought to you by Crane Shares. Go to Cranechairs.com to learn more about their whole suite of ETFs including K-Web. The Crane Shares China. Internet ETF clip. That's a CraneShare's K-Web covered call strategy. And also check out China last night, which is your daily newsletter for all things, China. Cranchairs.com to learn more. Welcome to Animal Spirits, a show about markets, life, and investing. Join Michael Batnik and Ben Carlson as they talk about what they're reading. writing, writing, and watching. All opinions expressed by Michael and Ben are solely their own opinion and do not reflect the opinion of Ridholt's wealth management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for any investment decisions. Clients of Ridholt's wealth management may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. Welcome to Animal Spirits with Michael and Ben. Michael, I think we both learned this past year that we don't really know a lot about China. Is that fair to say? It's

It's the second largest economy in the world, and yet I think to a lot of Americans, frankly, the country remains kind of a mystery. It's not exactly a destination people go to travel to for vacations, right? So I don't think a lot of people know and understand that much about the society. And so we read Dan Wong's new book, Breakneck, and felt like we understood a little bit more. But we have experts from crane shares we've talked to multiple times now. Brandon, most notably, who writes China last night, who travels there all the time. He invests in the company. companies knows about others to know, but I do think it is kind of a blind spot for U.S. investors.

Is that fair to say? I was just going to say that exact thing, Ben. It is a blind spot. I think we are fortunate to live in our bubble, a very beautiful bubble. It is. But we often don't think about what's going on outside of our borders. And China is arguably hard to argue that there's anything else. That's the second biggest economy in the world.

It just is. It's very important. Dan Wang's book definitely open my eyes. The stock market versus the economy. I think this is like one of the first posts I wrote, how the stock market does not equal the economy. It's, it's no place isn't more true than in China. I think Vanguard had a study about this like in probably 2014.

Right. The GDP girl versus the stock market girl. Yeah, right. Since 1990 hasn't really gone anywhere. And it's even, it's widened ever since. Pretty remarkable. What are these days on maybe? Well, they do have this huge tech sector now.

And they're, they're fighting us for AI supremacy. Yeah. And it sounds like the, the race is closer than most people would. assume. And obviously the deep seek thing was maybe a little bit of a wake-up call. So we talked to Brennan Ahren, who was a chief investment officer at Crane Shiers. We talked to him a number of times before. It's always great to learn because he's in this. He's following this China news a lot. He's writing on it on a daily basis for his China last night newsletter, which he's been doing for a long time now. So we peppered Brendan with

questions about the book that we read and about the societies and about the tech stocks there and the actual companies. Michael tried to pronounce one of them. Didn't go very well. So here is our talk with Brendan. Brendan, welcome back to the show. Now, great to be back, Ben. Happy holidays. All right. Michael and I are now self-professed China expert because we read Dan Wong's book, Breakneck.

Very good. Curious to hear your thoughts. Do you think he just tonally or... Because China has always been something of a mystery to me. And I thought he really nailed the differences between the societies. And maybe it was a little too clever to say, like, hey, it's the engineering society versus a lawyerless society, but do you think he... Ben bought it Hucklin and Saker. I did, but do you think he was, as you being an actual China expert, do you think he kind of nailed the tone of of the different

societies and the pros and cons between the two different systems? I thought it was a great book. I thought the chapter on the Shenzhen manufacturing ecosystem is worth the price of the book. And the book was expensive. It was like 37 bucks. So I might have to go back and expense it. I thought, you know, A, I mean, I mean, he lived there and experienced at firsthand. So I thought that kind of boots on the ground perspective, you know, the, you know, the views of different cities and culturally, you know, arguably academically. You know, China, China is paying the, you know, receiving the dividends of investing in STEM education from 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. And I kind of jokingly say, you know, it's probably not a lot of. of middle-aged French poet, you know, majors in Chinese schools. It's a very STEM orientation. I think

you see, you know, there's there's an output to that. And they're arguably maybe receiving some of the rewards of that. A couple of weeks ago, Ben and I were talking about the, the tech bubble bursting. And I know you know this, but I feel like, I don't know if it's being underreported or people are just tired of talking about it. But 21, 22, and 23 was a mini bursting of the bubble. I don't know if it was a bubble or not. But it was similar to 99, 2000, where, Ben, do you remember the numbers offhand 2000? I want to know what they were like? Oh, for the NASDAQ, it was down 30% or more each year.

Okay. consecutively. So 2021 was down 49%. I'm talking about K-Web. 2022 was down 17%, 23 was down 9%. Now rebound to 24, healthy year to date in 2025, up 25% as of this recording. It's Monday, December 22nd. Before we look forward, 21, 22, and 23. Was that the bursting of a bubble? Like, remind us exactly what it happened, because I know it's not that long ago, but it feels like it's pretty far in the rear view mirror. You had a few contributors. One of them was, you know, the U.S. hedge fund, Archegos, was, levered up in 10 U.S. listed stocks. Five of those, five of those 10 stocks were Chinese ADRs,

where, you know, he was levered up 100 to 1. And that was really the catalyst in February of 2021. That was the peak. You know, an element of that rise was driven by Archegos's activity and the knock-on effect. But yeah, then you had a whole host of, you know, these are policy errors. And we can rationalize why they did each of these policies. They, you know, they popped the housing bubble. You know, the government did that on purpose. Why? Because they don't need more houses. They need technology. And they wanted to shift that savings, that investment that historically went into housing, they geared it into semiconductors and high-end manufacturing. You had internet regulation, that you had the polling of ant groups IPO.

And again, there's rationalization that you had a lot of data in there that they were going to be come under, you know, they were skirting bank laws by calling themselves a fintech company. You had internet regulation in terms of online education companies. you had COVID, you know, and obviously in Dan Wang's book, you know, he speaks about his experience during zero COVID policy. You have this whole host of policy errors that really slaughtered the China Bulls, right? If you were China Bear, you never owned those names or you had, you know, you had very little non-U.S. equity exposure. So it was the China Bulls that got hurt. And I think that's where this process of people coming back into the space will take so long that there's a lot

of scar tissue, there's a lot of people who hold grudges. And in terms of this re-rating we've seen over the last two years, it's really been, I would argue, outside of U.S. hedge funds and U.S. technical analysts, it's really non-U.S. institutions are the one coming back into the space. Part of that is just the U.S. market's done so well. Why would you bother with non-U.S. equities in general, right? Yeah, for 16 years, they haven't worked. You know, Harry Markowitz, they should take back his Nobel Prize. Diversification doesn't work.

I mean, I don't believe that, but it's hard after 16 years, 64 quarters of these non-U.S. equities never keep up. Hey, they finally did in 2025. I'm curious about the AI story in China, because that's all people that were talking about In the U.S., of course, where do we stand there? I mean, we had the deep seek moment, and that was a freak out for like four days. But other than that, like, how far is China really behind the U.S.? Or are they still behind? Like, where do we stand in terms of the artificial intelligence race between the countries?

I mean, on AI, it's a very different, you know, how they're going about it is it's all open source. You know, if you look at Deep Seek and Alibaba's Q1, Badu's Erniebot, These are open source code. Anyone can download it for free. And that's very different than the business model of perplexity and anthropic and open AI, where they're trying to build a moat around their businesses. And that's maybe why there's this race element because you're in a race to try to garner market share and clients. And in China, it's more about the implementing it across businesses.

That's where the real AI companies are really the cloud computing companies, Alibaba, Tencent, and Badu. They're the ones that are ultimately really benefiting from AI as opposed to trying to monetize large language models. So what does the adoption rate look like in China then? Are people in businesses using it more? Is this something that the government really wants to happen? Like where are we in adoption curve? The government is very geared and we've got this draft of the 15. five-year plan and technology, you know, you'd argue it's all about domestic consumption and

technology self-reliance. So there's definitely a policy tailwind to not just AI, but you'd argue semiconductors, big data. The U.S. putting China companies on export controls, it kind of forced them to say, we have to come up with our own alternatives. I mean, there's, you know, You know, Apple, you know, I would argue that trying to bankrupt Huawei by cutting them off from U.S. technology, they were either going to go bankrupt or they were going to innovate. And unfortunately for Apple, you know, they innovated their way out of it by making a phone that's arguably better than an iPhone. I mean, just flat out, the pro mate 60 plus is a better phone than an iPhone. And that's a consequence of power. mouth.

Brandon, let me ask you this. I can't say this for sure, but I'm going to guess that Kweb is the only chart that looks like this. I have a chart that shows the total assets of their management versus the price. And the price peaked. And yeah, this was a hell of a run-up. It went from, what is this, $42 bucks a share. I'm cherry-picking the bottom, so forgive me.

Let's just say it went from like $47. a share prior to COVID, okay? And it ran all the way up to $103 by the end of February 2021. And then we know what happened. I spoke about that a few minutes ago. But investors didn't really panic the way that you would expect them to. I mean, there was, of course, ebbs and flows. But my point is this. We're now four years removed from the top. The top was $103. The share price today is $35, give or take. And yet, total. last instance of management, he's the new all-time high. You don't see too many charts like that. Most of the times investors run away from bad investments. What's your take on what's happening

here? Like, how do you explain those dynamics? K-Web is probably unique across the U.S. listed China. Yeah, the majority of China ETS were closed over the last three years. I mean, the number of funds available declined dramatically. We've been pounding the table for many, you know, for a long time saying, You know, K-WIP is really a growth factor for China. And we don't hold financials, energy, industrials. You know, if you're going to cut your China position down, you're probably going to get rid of old China. And maybe the piece you keep is going to be, you know,

this kind of growth, China tech, you know, China tech, so to speak. So I think we've been very fortunate, you know, where the asset class is either gone out of business or been eviscerated. And, you know, I mean, literally half of the China ETFs no longer exist in the U.S. Wait, so why is that? What happened? Just got destroyed. Oh, so the bad performance and the companies closed them down?

Yeah, just closed them down. Okay. I'm curious about it. So we've talked about the currency effects with other countries, you know, European stocks and other foreign developed stocks are benefiting from the dollar falling this year. I assume it's the same thing in China. You're getting a good currency tailwind? I would definitely agree.

I think, you know, from traveling to Europe for work, You know, you feel the conversation that comes up is, you know, European investors are not up, you know, nearly 20% on the S&P 500. You know, if you're a Euro-denominated investor in U.S. equities, you're up four. If you're Swiss franc and, you know, you're three Swedish cronas like five. So one, I definitely think, you know, investors are kind of, you know, not, there's an element of non-U.S. investors, particularly out of Europe, are rebound. I mean, I'm not saying they're dumping U.S. equity. I'm just saying they're arguably hitting that rebalance button. European investors and U.S. stocks have had a hell of a decade. Yes. Yeah, because they had the

dollar falling before, or rising before, which is good for them. Exactly. I mean, they had this huge tailwind that's becoming a headwind. We're starting to see this, particularly, you know, we have a European business and the flows in China, ETFs in Europe is, you know, in the U.S. it's about one and a half billion of net inflow into U.S. listed China ETFs. The U.S. ETF industry is 13 trillion. In Europe, it's over $8 billion.

And that's on a $3 trillion ETF market. So, so like, why are European investors putting, you know, Forex, the money into China. It's just as they rebalance and position, some of it's going to end up in European stocks, but some of it's going to end up in Asian emerging markets. So I think we're seeing the currency, a big factor for U.S. 1.5 billion into China, ETFs for 2025.

If that was a U.S. equity ETF that had that inflow, it would be the 78th largest inflow year to date, which means it's basically zero money, despite, you know, really two pretty good years, two pretty good years. So in the U.S., everyone of their brother are worried about an AI bubble-popping. People are concerned about, I guess, the ethics of AI and what it could do to the labor market. And you mentioned China has this like five or 15-year plan. And obviously, we talk about the Dan Wong book,

building out of stuff is a big part of that. And it sounds like technology is a piece of that. Is the public in China concert at all that AI? Do they have the same fears that we do? Or is it kind of like, no, this comes from the top, that AI is a part of what we're doing now. Everyone get on board. I think it's more the latter that I think it's viewed as a tool. The other thing is I'm not really a buyer that, you know, I was out in San Francisco

where there's Waymo's all over the place. And, you know, you know, having a Linda in San Francisco. you know, Uber was invented in San Francisco. There was no taxis. I mean, you literally couldn't get a taxi. So, so eliminating your taxi cab force for the city of San Francisco, particularly when you got, you know, alphabet, you know, basically funding the whole thing. Like, you don't really care.

But here in New York, you know, if I want to get from JFK into New York and I don't want to take a cab, I got to get on a monorail, then the Long Island Railroad. It's all done on purpose, right? Like the New York taxi and Lumazin position is like, we've got a lot of money and a lot of political pool. So this idea that AI is just going to, you know, I really think locally, you know, municipal governments, state governments, naturally are going to say, you know, we're not just going to put huge swathes of our, you know, of our workforce out of business. Like, who's going to vote for us if we fire all of our voters? So, so this idea. of like, yeah, I think things might get a little more efficient. But I definitely think it'll get, you know, it'll get implemented very incremental. And in China, you know, I mean, I've heard the argument, well, you know, they got a demographic issue. But it's like, yeah, but so does everybody. Everybody's got a demographic.

I mean, I think, I think where we see AI, where we're, you know, kind of, you know, really think AI is going to get there. It's actually on the humanoid robotics. And that's self, you know, that's self. that's kind of a self-fulfilling argument since we have a humanoid robotic ETF. But in China, it's like, yeah, people really want to adopt that technology to make their lives easier. And I think that's true here in the U.S. I mean, you know, Musk is obviously the biggest proponent. I mean, there's people that say Tesla will be out of the auto, you know, out of the car making business.

It's just going to be an optimist, just a humanoid robotics company. When investors are considering buying Chinese tech stocks, like, what exactly are they buying? Is it Chinese governance making some sort of adjustments? Is it the growth in the earnings per share? Is it a potential re-rating of how investors feel about this? Like, what are my, if I buy this, what am I betting on? Part of it is a re-rating. The geopolitical, you know, is very hard for U.S. investors.

you know, you've got your MBA, your CFA, you should be buying low, selling high, by low valuations and trimming your high. But when you apply that to China, I think it's hard because even if I'm an institutional investor, I have a board, I have trustees, I think the U.S. geopolitical narrative is tough. I mean, I think, I think, so one, I think, you know, if, you know, Trump is supposed to go to meet with Xi in China, in Asia. April, their APAC meeting is actually in, pretty sure it's actually in Shenzhen in the fall. Anyway, like, what if, what if some of that geopolitical headwind goes away?

Because Trump says, we're going to do a bigger deal with China. I think it allows investment professionals to come back. You know, in the case of K-Web, Michael, you know, these are, you know, private companies. You know, the founder is the CEO or the chairperson of every company. You know, there are, you know, yes, you have e-commerce companies, but you have online video, online gaming, mobile payments. There's a, you know, there's more to the space than just like Alibaba. There's arguably, you know, companies like Badu and, you know, I think there's a whole host of value plays. And then you could get this re-rating, which is multiple expansion.

And that's a part of what we've seen. I think if you get this policy to raising domestic consumption in China, that's where you actually see earnings per share growth. If you look at the valuations of small caps or midcaps or international stocks, they all kind of trade at a similar discount to the large cap U.S. stocks. Is it similar in China where it's that kind of discount? With China, you've got A shares, Shanghai, Shet, and Zen, that's only about, you know, if you're an MSCI investor, it's only like 15%.

percent of MSCI. It's a small part of the definition of China. That's a closed capital system. So the valuations tend to be very high. And that's where you see some of these companies in the AI space. They're more expensive than Navidia. And it's just because if I'm in mainland China, my investment universe is really small because I can't buy EFA or, you know, VU or, you know, whatever, you know, IEMG, I have a really narrow. I have capital controls. My money has to stay in China, so it bids up the growth names. The offshore, the Hong Kong names, US ADRs, that's where a lot of other growth companies list, mainly because they were funded by U.S. private equity. You know, one of these companies you might have heard of, TikTok, you know, funded by Bite

is funded by U.S. private equity. But a lot of those companies listed in, Hong Kong and the U.S., so their U.S. private equity could get a Hong Kong dollar-denominated exit strategy. So a lot of the growth names are actually in Hong Kong. How are these companies doing? Like, let's talk about, I'll use one example because I'm not familiar with this company, May Twan, I don't know if I said that right. What is this company? How would they do it? It's a 7.5% ish weight in the fund. Yeah. So Medawan, you know, this is where. Not even close. I was close enough. I mean, you said our Chejos, so I think we're fair. Yeah, yeah.

I don't listen, people say like, I say I'm still working on my first language. It's the struggle is real. This is a restaurant delivery company, dominant, dominant market share. JD decided to enter into that space and they've destroyed their bottom lines. They, you know, you basically can order restaurant delivery for free, in China today because these two companies are just battling it out for market share. And it's really, really hurt their bottom line. Their net income and earnings per share growth has just been wiped out. And that's weighed a little bit on Alibaba. They have a restaurant delivery union.

That's where we've actually, you know, we favor some of the other parts of the portfolio today. How is the Chinese consumer? And like these tech names, are they, how reliance? aren't they on enterprise deals versus the health of the consumer? It's more of the latter. I mean, it's very much, you know, 25% of all retail sales is online. Online retail sales is up 9% through November year over year. So that's versus about, you know, 4%. So it's actually, it's the consumer, the consumer in China is very wealthy.

It's just they're bringing very conservative because, Real estate accounted for two-thirds of their portfolio. And that just really, really came down. So the households have been hoarding cash as opposed to spending it. And that's why you read so much about, you know, the Chinese consumer isn't consuming. It's not that they don't have money or they don't have a job. It's just they've taken such a hit on their portfolio because of the, fine in real estate prices.

So you have, I don't know, if you look at the top five or six names here, you have something like 30 to 40 percent in those top names. Is that pretty standard for the fund to have that level of concentration? It has been, you know, part of that is, you know, simply the big companies like a 10 cent and Alibaba are just, you know, worth so much more than some of the other players in the space. So it's not, it's not been unusual. What's kind of been interesting is some of the companies that have been our best performers, online video companies. These are kind of competitors to TikTok in China.

Billy Billy and Kwashu have done very well. Trip.com is like their online travel has done pretty well. So it's been an inner, you know, 10 cent. You know, it's the Facebook of China, but also, you know, one of the largest gaming companies globally, you know, they own Clash of Clans and Fortnite. They've done well. So it's, you know, that's where the, what kind of what the fund does for you is it's,

it's actually, you know, held a diversified basket. And, you know, it's been a diverse group of winners over the last two, three years. So I mentioned earlier that the assets in the fund are at an all-time high. When you talk to investors, are you sensing their tone is different? Like, is it just a consolidation that there's not a ton of other vehicles to invest in? Or are they, like, excited? In the U.S., you say China, people throw stuff at you. Going to Europe, there's a lot of money in motion.

You know, there's a large part of the world is geared economically to China. So if you think about BHP is the largest company in Australia. So Australian, you know, institutions, they have these. these super annuities, you know, those Australian superiors, they don't get their China news from the Wall Street Journal or Bloomberg or, you know, they get it from listening to BHP on a quarterly basis. And what's BHP saying about China? Things are going well.

And in Brazil, you know, Valet, you know, is the second largest company, you know, Rio Tinto, Anglo-American, Southern Copper, SQM, Glencore, right? Like, you know, a lot of these non-U.S. institutions, their economies are geared. You know, same in Asia, obviously. ASEAN is China's biggest trade partner. So, you know, that's where, you know, we spend a lot of time outside of the U.S. meeting with our very global and very institutional client base because they're not deterred by a geopolitical narrative.

And I think that is a big issue for U.S. institutions. So we're in outlook season now. if you had to give us the 2026 outlook for investing in China, like what's the glass-safel version of that? What are you bullish on? I mean, I think we're bullish on U.S.-China relations under President Trump that him going to China, taking this trade truce and making it into a broader trade deal, will allow for a re-rating of Chinese equities.

We don't, we think our view is like Uber optimists. The market is not pricing in. that outcome. And I'd argue there's signs of that. But then obviously we've got this 15th, five-year plan, very focused on domestic consumption. And then they've also been focused on actually addressing overcapacity, overproduction in things like solar, auto, steel, cement, aluminum. And I think if that anti, they call it anti-involution, that could actually make a lot of these Chinese companies much more profitable for their shareholders. So, so there's obviously risks to all of, you know, there's obviously risks that, you know, Trump could choke on a

Kung power chicken or, you know, like U.S.-China relations could go off the rails. But I think there's a whole wealth of investors are, you know, that don't really care about that. It's a U.S. centric issue. All right, bear case. Like what are, what are the bears still saying about it? Is it just that why would there be a re-reating? There needs to be a catalyst. It's not just going to happen. Like, Is that the bare case or is there something else? You know, at some point, you know, some of these narratives like, you know, when do you kind of call BS? You know, oh, the, you know, China's economy is about to collapse or they're about to invade Taiwan. I'm like, it's been 76 years since Shanghai Czech went to Taiwan.

You know, 76 times 365 is 27,740. So if I told you there's the probability of event that is zero for 27,000, and 740. And I said, what do you think it's going to be tomorrow? You'd say zero. But I say, oh, no, no, I'm talking about China and Taiwan. You'd say, oh, it's at least 50-50. So at some point, some of these narratives, like, maybe we shouldn't believe them.

You know, maybe we should go to China, you know, and see it for ourselves. Or you'll read it. You know, Dan Wang's book is great. But, you know, I thought Bill Gurley, I don't know if you've listened to the BG squared podcast, Bill Gurley and, uh, broadcast. Gerster. Yeah. You know, Bill Gurley went to China after Thomas Friedman from the New York Times went. So there's a little bit of like, I don't know, maybe, maybe, maybe this narrative that Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, maybe that's false. Maybe that's not true.

By the way, that was the most impressive math ever done on this show. That was a well done. 27 what? No offense, Brandon, I feel like you've used that before. And just once or twice. I thought you just did it off. I'm really confused with rain, man. That was impressive. All right. If people want to learn more and check out your research, learn about KWeb, the other,

the humanoid ETF, where do we send them? Clip? Can't forget clip? Yep. Clip? I mean, that's the call writing.

I mean, you know, yeah, we got, these are like my kids. I love them all. But yeah, just crane shares.com.

And then, yeah, I write a daily research blog called China Last Night.com where the ideas to, tell people what I think is the most important thing that actually happened in China. And so obviously don't need to read it every day. But you'll wake up and there'll be some crazy headline.

And we try to take a data-driven perspective on some of these issues. Brian, can I give you an idea? What if we did, what if on Friday you did China last week to give yourself a break? But you can subscribe for a weekly. You can actually subscribe for the weekly, Michael. So you don't have to do the daily sign up. All right. Brandon, it's always great to see you.

Appreciate you coming on, and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you so much. Thank you, Michael. Thank you, Ben. Okay, thank you to Brendan. Remember, check out. If you go to cranesharrows.com, you can check out China last night and sign up for the newsletter there.

cransharers.com to learn more about their ETSS. Email us, Animal Spirits at the CompoundNews.com.