China Wars: Return of the Contras

Plus: How to "trade" China!

“China Giveth, China Rug-Pulleth” - Le Shrub

It’s Tuesday, 8th October. HSI Futures are down -11%. Commodities are collapsing, with Copper down -3%. Anglo American is -6%.

China just returned from holiday, and a key NDRC policy meeting failed to deliver on further stimulus. Wall Street, once again assuming that China is like the US, was expecting a 2 trillion Yuan fiscal package, with some expecting an even higher 5-10 trillion package. Instead, the NDRC just repeated vows to reach 2024 growth targets and support the economy. China Giveth, China Rug-Pulleth.

But that’s not the only thing that happened. For the real picture of what’s going on, we need to bring out the heavy artillery once again and ask our proprietary AI LLM, ShrubGPT:

“ShrubGPT, why are HSI futures down 11% today?”