Alibaba And Other Chinese Stocks Soar While Ignoring This Big Risk

This month, Chinese technology stocks such as Alibaba BABA +3.30%  at the time of this writing, and others looked to have stopped their precipitous decline that had been going on for the past two years. Investors who are betting on a recovery may be missing the risk that is posed by China’s “zero Covid” policy and the extent to which these stocks are likely to continue to suffer.

Alibaba (ticker: BABA), along with the rest of the Chinese stocks technology sector, found itself on the wrong side of regulators in both Beijing and Washington in 2021, which resulted in a loss of about half of the company’s worth. The picture did not clear up much in 2022, with China’s rigorous rules to limit Covid-19 bringing in the lowest revenue growth the business has ever seen on record for the company.

The value of the market has been eroded steadily as a result of this. However, at the beginning of November, it appeared that things were about to take a turn for the better, as there were rumors that China was about to relax its laws around Covid-19, which were at least partially supported by material actions to relieve the pressure of limitations. The stock of Alibaba, which is representative of the entire technology industry and its sensitivity to expansion in the world’s second-largest economy, has seen a remarkable increase of 24 percent over the course of the past month. In comparison, the S&P 500 index has increased by 6% since the beginning of the year. After suffering through a difficult period over the past two years, it’s likely that investors are becoming overly enthusiastic too quickly.

We applaud recent efforts made by China to relax some of the stringent limitations that it has imposed. However, are investors  looking to purchase stocks expecting a release from lockdowns more sooner than what is reasonable?

Mark Haefele, the chief investment officer of UBS Global Wealth Management, stated in a recent note that “a meaningful reopening, which we define as a permanent end to snap lockdowns and other domestic mobility curbs, is most likely to take place in [the third quarter of 2023].” “A meaningful reopening” is defined as “an end to snap lockdowns and other domestic mobility curbs.” Although the end of the year 2023 is still quite a ways off, markets do function by factoring in events that take place over a longer time horizon. Between now and then, there are at least two important questions that remain: how terrible the Covid-19 situation continues to be in China, and what the recent consolidation of power by President Xi Jinping implies for a progressive policy on the coronavirus.

On Thursday, investors were given a jarring reminder of the first uncertainty as a result of China’s National Health Commission reporting more than 31,000 new cases of Covid-19. This is the biggest daily number reported since the start of the epidemic. Despite this, Alibaba stock was able to stage a comeback, sending the Hong Kong-listed shares 1.3% higher.

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