Reporting from Shanghai by reporter Hu Jinhua of our newspaper (chinatimes.net.cn)
A-shares have recently received frequent favorable policies, but under the market conditions where the index is suppressed as soon as it rises, domestic quantitative private equity institutions that have become an important trading force have been pushed to the forefront. Whether they are bad elements who "help the stock market rise and kill the fall" in the stock market, or are "good students" who increase the activity of stock market transactions, the market cannot agree. However, in the eyes of regulators, it is necessary to re-examine domestic programmed transactions.
On the evening of September 1, the China Securities Regulatory Commission guided the three major stock exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen to issue the "Notice on Matters Concerning the Reporting of Programmed Stock Trading" and the "Notice on Matters Concerning Strengthening the Management of Programmed Trading". In these two notices, the three major exchanges clearly stated that they will implement real-time monitoring of the securities trading behavior of program trading investors, and focus on monitoring four types of matters: First, abnormal trading behaviors that may affect securities trading prices, securities trading volume, or exchange system security as stipulated in business rules; The second is a transaction with a maximum filing rate of more than 300 orders per second, or a maximum number of orders in a single day of more than 20,000. Third, the trading prices or trading volumes of multiple securities are obviously abnormal, during which a large number of programmed transactions are involved. Fourth, other matters that the exchange considers need to be monitored.
After the above two notices were issued, many well-known quantitative private equity institutions in the market spoke out, pointing out that their proportion of ultra-high-frequency trading was small and controllable, and the notices would have little impact on the company's trading level.
"In the past week, quantitative investment and private equity quantitative institutions have suddenly become the focus of market attention. The reason is that the A-share market has adjusted sharply after jumping from the high opening on Monday, coupled with the recent purchase of a luxury house by a private equity boss. After the fermentation of the Internet media, many investors believe that the stock market decline is 'cutting leeks' by quantitative institutions. The introduction of the above notice is the first time that my country has formally established a programmed transaction reporting system and corresponding regulatory arrangements in the stock market, clearly stipulating that stock exchanges include possible impacts. Strengthen monitoring and control of key matters such as abnormal trading behavior that affects securities trading prices, securities trading volume, or exchange system security. The purpose is to incorporate programming into the legal supervision system, crack down on illegal transactions using programmed trading, and maintain a healthy market environment. At the same time, the latest requirements will also promote the development of standardized trading and help the quantitative investment industry move forward steadily." Xu Jiaying, general manager of Shanghai Qianfulai Asset Management Company, said in an interview with China Times.
However, some people in the industry are worried that once high-frequency programmatic trading withdraws from the market, the activity of A-shares may be even lower.
Quantitative private equity players have spoken out
In recent years, the scale of quantitative private equity institutions has expanded rapidly. A number of tens of billions or even hundreds of billions of quantitative private equity giants have emerged in Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. These institutions have also lived up to customer expectations. When A-shares did not have large-level market prices and the index only fluctuated within a narrow range, they created considerable returns for customers. Although some quantitative products have poor returns, they far outperformed the net worth financial management of last year and the year before. However, quantitative private equity's focus on high-frequency trading and fast-in and fast-out style has also attracted the attention of more investors and fundamentalists.
On September 4, He Bin (pseudonym), a tens-billion-level quantitative private equity investor in Shanghai, analyzed during an interview that exchanges have been closely monitoring abnormal quantitative trading behaviors. Therefore, this time the focus of attention is on transactions with a maximum filing rate of more than 300 transactions per second, or a maximum daily filing rate of more than 20,000 transactions. Assume that the average order cancellation rate of a quantitative product is 6%, the minimum transaction amount is 10,000 yuan, and there are 20,000 transactions in a single day, the transaction volume is approximately 200 million yuan. If the turnover rate is 20% bilaterally per day, only products with a scale of about 1 billion yuan will be monitored intensively. Therefore, quantitative products with extremely high turnover rates or large scale may be focused on and additionally report multiple aspects of information.
According to statistics from a reporter from China Times, after the notice was issued, a number of quantitative institutions, including Qianxiang Assets, Niankong Technology, Siyuan Quantification, Century Frontier, Wenbo Investment, etc., expressed their attitudes.
Qianxiang Asset stated that the company’s alpha strategy includes three types: high frequency, medium frequency and low frequency, and the strategy is relatively balanced. At present, the proportion of stocks exchanged by the company every day is about 20%, which does not belong to ultra-high-frequency trading. The total daily declaration volume of products with a scale of less than 500 million yuan in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets is less than 20,000 times. Therefore, the relevant measures introduced this time will not have much impact on the practicality of the company's current strategy. Relevant measures are expected to have a greater impact on strategies such as high-frequency bottom positions T0 and high-frequency securities lending T0.
"At present, the latest regulatory requirements have little impact on the operation of the company's strategy itself. Moreover, there is about a month's interval between the release of the "Reporting Notice" and "Management Notice" from the release to the official implementation. Each company has sufficient time to make adjustments and adaptations at the transaction execution level." Jukuan Investment said.
After the issuance of the above two notices, Siyuan Quantitative Investment Director Wang Xiong said that the China Securities Regulatory Commission guided major stock exchanges to introduce a series of measures to strengthen the supervision of programmed trading, which means that programmed trading will be included in a reasonable and legal regulatory system, which will help to further improve market transparency, crack down on illegal and illegal transactions using programmed trading, and maintain a healthy market order and ecology. At the same time, the latest requirements will also promote the standardized development of programmatic trading and help the quantitative investment industry move forward steadily.
Qianfulai Asset Management stated that the company’s quantitative transactions of convertible bonds did not reach this level in terms of declaration speed and quantity. And before the release of these two documents, most of the quantitative interfaces that I came into contact with also set limits on the frequency of declarations and the number of declarations. As an asset management company that interfaces with them, the company's system is actually designed according to the descriptions in the documents from beginning to end, so the new regulations basically have no impact on the company's trading behavior.
"For a mature and orderly capital market, standardized program transactions are indispensable. Therefore, the inclusion of program transactions in the regulatory system is of great significance for improving the resilience and vitality of the capital market. At the same time, regular reporting helps regulators understand the market situation more clearly, thereby improving the foresight and effectiveness of the entire market risk response, which will benefit the development of quantitative investment in the long run." Wang Xiao, chairman of Niankong Technology, pointed out.
On September 5, relevant people from Century Frontier told a reporter from China Times that since September 2021, regulators and multiple quantitative institutions have had many active communications, and established an information registration and reporting mechanism. In the process, they gradually understood the essence of quantitative trading, and finally settled into the content of this release.
"Judging from the results, the supervision recognizes programmatic trading as an important trading method, and also recognizes the positive significance of programmatic trading in improving transaction efficiency and enhancing market liquidity. We are still waiting for the further release of specific details. Based on the information we have seen so far, the standards of 300 declarations per second and 20,000 declarations per day are loose enough, and only require more information for exceeding the situation. We judge that it will not have a negative impact on the product." The person said frankly.
"Wenbo Investment calculates based on existing algorithmic trading that there are basically no strategies for trading more than 300 transactions per second. Calculated based on an average transaction amount of 10,000 yuan and a transaction rate of 70%, 20,000 subscriptions, an annualized change of hands 50 times, and a single product with an upper limit of 700 million yuan or more will receive special attention; such as If the company changes hands 200 times, special attention will be paid to those with a single product scale of more than 500 million yuan. Based on the overall assessment, it will not have a negative impact on the current strategy. The standardized development of the industry will be beneficial to the healthy development of the entire quantitative industry," the relevant person in charge of Wenbo Investment told this reporter.
What is the future of quantitative trading?
Currently, how much of the daily trading volume of A-shares is quantitative trading has always attracted market attention.
The Private Equity Filing Monthly Report of the Asset Management Association shows that as of the end of 2022, the scale of private securities investment funds will be approximately 5.6 trillion yuan. Calculated based on a 15% ratio, the scale of quantitative/hedge strategy funds at the end of 2022 may be between 800 billion and 900 billion yuan.
According to research and communication data released by Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, the average daily turnover rate of large-scale quantitative private equity is between 10% and 20%. Based on an estimated daily average turnover rate of 15% (the turnover rate of small and medium-sized quantitative private equity is generally higher), the daily trading amount contributed by quantitative private equity can reach more than 120 billion yuan, accounting for 13% of the average daily trading amount of A-shares in 2022.
“Compared with U.S. stocks, the current absolute scale and relative transaction proportion of A-share quantitative private placements are low, but it is already a part that cannot be ignored in the transaction structure of the A-share market. However, the notice issued by the regulatory authorities predicts that three types of products may be affected: The first is private equity high-frequency self-operated trading; the second is a time-selected hedging strategy product, that is, a product that uses A-shares to open lower in the morning to do T-quantity if the position is not satisfied overnight; the third is a product that combines large-scale holding reduction and uses securities lending," Xu Jiaying told a reporter from China Times.
Xu Jiaying believes that China's quantitative trading is dominated by medium and low frequency. At present, the average turnover rate of my country's leading quantitative institutions is far from reaching the standards of high-frequency trading, and high-frequency quantification often has relatively small strategic capacity, which will not have a great impact on the overall stock market trading volume and liquidity.
It is worth noting that the management recently proposed to continue to increase and promote the issuance of ETF funds to introduce more long-term funds into the market. Quantitative private equity institutions seem to be acting in unison to prepare to be long in the market.
"Comparing domestic and overseas markets, the situation where funds make money but investors do not is often due to investors being accustomed to procyclical operations. Especially during periods when market performance is unsatisfactory and the index is at a relatively low point, many investors lack confidence. As far as the current A-share market is concerned, market valuations have basically met the requirements. The absolute bottom characteristics are not significantly different from the historical bottoms of previous rounds of A-shares. It should be an excellent time to go long on the index and configure a quantitative index increase strategy, especially a fundamental index increase strategy.” On September 5, Xu Zhongxiang, founder of Ruilian Jingchun, a well-known foreign quantitative private equity firm, expressed his opinion.
Wang Li, general manager of Niankong Investment, said that at this stage, the A-share policy bottom has appeared, and the market bottom has yet to be verified. But overall, when the policy is basically established, it should be a better time to deploy quantitative index products. In addition, quantitative index growth products are always fully operated, and the inflow of related incremental funds will make a positive contribution to the overall funding of the A-share market.
The relevant person in charge of Mengxi Investment pointed out that the current A-share market is at a low level for many years, and the downside risk is much smaller than when the market was at a high level. Therefore, the "potential beta upside" of the quantitative index growth strategy is larger. From an asset allocation perspective, now is a good time to invest in quantitative index growth strategies. In addition, quantitative strategies such as quantitative index growth strategies have the characteristics of high positions and will have a significant positive effect on stabilizing and assisting market capital.
"The sound development path of quantitative trading involves multiple key factors. The first is transparency and supervision. It is very important to improve the transparency of quantitative trading and ensure that regulatory agencies have sufficient supervisory powers. Regulators need to understand quantitative trading strategies, algorithms and trading processes to monitor market manipulation, malicious trading and systemic risks. Regulators should also constantly update regulations to adapt to the rapid development of quantitative trading technology; secondly, risk management, quantitative trading companies should develop strict risk management Risk management policies, including limiting trading leverage, setting risk exposure limits and implementing risk control processes, can help prevent potential huge losses and market shocks; finally, there is market liquidity. Quantitative trading usually provides market liquidity, but it may also withdraw from the market in extreme circumstances. In order to ensure the stability of the market, quantitative traders need to cooperate with market regulators and other traders to ensure that sufficient liquidity is provided when the market fluctuates violently." Xu Jiaying told this reporter.
