A typical fund manager or analyst does not want to focus on or care about politics. What they really want to believe is that there is some system in place, that is above and beyond politics. I certainly was the same. But my last great short before closing my fund, was entirely based on catching changing policies. As detailed in my note (Short Selling Sucks - Sino Stock Series), in 2021 the Chinese government called in Chinese internet companies to have a chat about how they were running their businesses. I thought this sounded bad, so scoured the internet to find out which companies had been called in. Eventually I found this:
Which was pretty much the entire listed Chinese internet sector. The performance of the this sector was pretty well captures by KWEB US - A China Internet ETF.
While this short was satisfying, it opened my eyes to the fact that everything is political these days, and I was not sure I had the knowledge or the experience to put on trades based on politics. I also knew that I had got the market response to the election of Trump very wrong, so in a political world, I thought it was time to take a break. But after a few years on the side-lines, I think I know when I can see a pretty clear political opportunity in the markets.
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