In an era where chasing technology stocks brings significant gains, some investors are basking in the light and making substantial profits, while others are mired in the struggles of the Hong Kong market and consumer sectors, facing substantial portfolio drawdowns.
The first half of 2026 has concluded for the A-share market, with a structural bull run driven by iterations in the AI (Artificial Intelligence) industry setting the main theme. In this market characterized by rapid, intense, and concentrated movements, public funds have delivered a remarkably impressive mid-year report card.
This performance snapshot reveals that in this "tech-chasing" era, some are reaping immense rewards, while others are grappling with significant losses in Hong Kong and consumer stocks.
A Wide Performance Gap
Data analysis reveals that the public fund market in the first half of 2026 was filled with wealth-creating opportunities.
As of June 30th, the median return for the 4,874 actively managed equity funds (including aggressive allocation hybrid funds, flexible allocation funds, and standard equity funds) in the market reached 8.76% year-to-date, with over 66% of products achieving net asset value growth.
Notably, there has been a batch of funds achieving returns exceeding 100%. Looking back nearly 12 years through multiple bull and bear cycles, during the first half of the 2015 bull market, 17 actively managed equity funds doubled. In 2017, there were 2. By June 30, 2026, the number of actively managed equity funds that doubled in the first half of the year had reached 199.
In this performance surge, Founder Fubon Core Advantage A topped the list for the best half-year performance among actively managed equity funds with a year-to-date return of 183.67%. This not only led the second-place fund by over 10 percentage points but also broke the previous historical best half-year record of 160.31% set by Fullgoal Low-Carbon Environmental Protection in 2015. The next five products, including Caitong Multi-Strategy Fuxin and Orient Huixin A, also surpassed this historical record, all achieving year-to-date returns exceeding 161%.
However, this celebration was not evenly shared. Under extremely divergent market conditions, the performance gap between the top and bottom actively managed equity funds widened to a historically rare degree. Data shows the fund at the bottom, Xin'ao Bojian Growth, recorded a first-half return of -34.28%. This means the performance difference between the leader and the laggard reached 218 percentage points.
Data review indicates that industry giants like E Fund Management have non-money market fund assets under management (AUM) reaching 1.63 trillion yuan, and China Asset Management has AUM of 1.25 trillion yuan. However, neither firm appeared in the top ten list for actively managed equity performance in the first half. Furthermore, not a single fund company ranked in the top 20 by non-money AUM made it into this top ten list.
The fund companies that broke into the performance top ten generally have relatively lower AUM rankings. Founder Fubon Fund has non-money AUM of approximately 41 billion yuan, ranking 85th; Caitong Fund has non-money AUM of about 75.6 billion yuan, ranking 60th; Orient Fund has non-money AUM of around 102.8 billion yuan, ranking 48th.
Additionally, among the top ten performing "doubling" funds, the champion fund, Founder Fubon Core Advantage A, had a size of 588 million yuan as of the first quarter of this year. The runner-up, Caitong Multi-Strategy Fuxin, had a size of 335 million yuan in Q1. The third-place fund, Orient Huixin A, had a Q1 size of 490 million yuan.
Among the top ten half-year performers, only Orient Artificial Intelligence Theme A had a size exceeding 10 billion yuan. Yinhua Integrated Circuit A had a size of 7.9 billion yuan, while the other seven products all had sizes below 1 billion yuan.
A representative from a Beijing-based public fund institution noted that smaller vessels are easier to turn. Products with smaller asset bases can adjust their portfolios more flexibly in the face of one-sided, extreme market trends, allowing them to quickly concentrate positions in high-growth sectors—a feat difficult for products managing tens of billions to achieve.
Which Firms Produce the Most Doubling Funds?
Which firms have the highest concentration of funds that have doubled in value?
Data shows that E Fund Management has 117 actively managed equity products. As of June 30th, 13 of these achieved returns exceeding 100%, ranking first in the industry for the number of doubling funds, with an actual hit rate of approximately 11.11%.
China Asset Management has 136 actively managed equity products, producing 12 doubling funds, a hit rate of 8.82%.
Harvest Fund has 127 actively managed equity products, giving rise to 10 doubling funds, a hit rate of 7.87%.
However, under extremely divergent market conditions, simply looking at "which firm has the most doubling funds" might represent a form of survivorship bias. In other words, if a giant firm has hundreds of products, having multiple doubling funds through broad diversification is akin to casting a wide net.
Compared to the "large and comprehensive" approach of major firms, some medium-sized fund companies exhibited a more aggressive, "specialized" characteristic in the first half.
Caitong Fund was the most eye-catching institution in the first half. Among its actively managed equity products, Caitong has only 60 products in total, yet it produced 13 doubling funds. This represents a doubling fund proportion of 21.67%, far exceeding that of the leading giants and, to some extent, showcasing the company's "all-in bet" on the AI computing power sector.
Huashang Fund has a total of 63 active products, giving rise to 9 doubling funds, a proportion of 14.29%, also demonstrating a high degree of sector concentration.
If Caitong Fund is the vanguard among medium-sized public fund managers, then a few smaller public fund managers performed even more extremely. Red Soil Innovation Fund, a public fund institution with non-money AUM of only 9.3 billion yuan, has only 13 actively managed equity products. Among these 13 products, 6 achieved year-to-date returns exceeding 100%, meaning nearly half of its funds doubled.
Winners and Losers
A detailed analysis of the top holdings in the mid-year public fund performance leaderboard reveals it is essentially a ranking of how thoroughly one embraced AI.
This bull cycle established its turning point in September 2024, ignited a technology rally driven by large models in early 2025, and reached a consensus among capital on "policy support + ample liquidity + industrial upgrading." Consequently, among the 199 doubling funds, 110 and 21 had the electronics and communications sectors, respectively, as their largest industry holdings.
Taking the "half-year champion" fund Founder Fubon Core Advantage A, managed by fund manager Wu Hao, as an example, its top ten holdings in the first quarter report were a complete "all-star lineup" of the memory chip industry chain: Jiangbolong accounted for 10.88%, Demingli for 10.73%, and Xiangnong Xinchuang for 10.30%. Another notable figure is Caitong Fund's fund manager Jin Zicai. All seven products under his management have doubled year-to-date, with highly convergent holdings concentrated in areas like optical modules, PCBs (Printed Circuit Boards), and chips.
Fund manager Zhang Lin from China Merchants Fund stated that the core driver of the extreme market in the first half was the technological breakthrough in AI, leading to an FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out)-style explosive growth in the industry.
Where there is highlight, there is shadow. In this divergence of over 200 percentage points, more than 700 funds experienced declines exceeding 10%, completely lost on the other side of the market.
For instance, Xin'ao Bojian Growth ranked at the bottom with a first-half return of approximately -35%. Its disclosed top ten holdings in the first quarter report partly reveal the reasons for its underperformance. The fund was heavily weighted in Hong Kong-listed consumer and internet stocks, with a Hong Kong stock allocation reaching 45%. Among its top ten holdings, Mogaping accounted for 10.01%, Stone Technology for 9.95%, Li Auto for 9.92%, and Jianghuai Automobile for 9.92%, also including Pop Mart and Alibaba. Within the Hong Kong internet sector, Tencent fell 27.41% in the first half, and Meituan fell over 30% in the same period. In the consumer sector, Jianghuai Automobile fell over 45% and Mogaping fell over 35%, becoming the main sources of losses for the fund.
This is not an isolated case. It was found that several Hong Kong Stock Connect internet-themed ETFs (Exchange-Traded Funds) and Hong Kong consumer-themed funds saw declines of 25% or even over 30%. Amid the撕裂 of "technology soaring, Hong Kong stocks plummeting," traditional value investment logic faced severe challenges in the short term, with sector selection determining the magnitude of returns.
Looking ahead to the second half of the year, Wu Hao remains positively optimistic about the storage industry's medium to long-term prospects. He stated that the current storage industry is still in the middle, not the end, of this super cycle. In 2026, price, profitability, capital expenditure, long-term agreement signings, and sector performance are all being revised upward simultaneously, and profit forecast revisions can continue. The prevailing judgment tends to be consistent: the supply-demand gap in 2027 might be tighter than in 2026, not looser. Therefore, any pullbacks occurring in 2026 are more likely to be pauses within a high-growth phase rather than the starting point of a cycle reversal.
Fund manager Wang Youcao from CITIC Prudential Fund stated: "The semiconductor equipment sector may currently be entering a channel of accelerating prosperity. The triple logic of explosive demand for AI model inference, supply-demand imbalance in memory, and domestic innovation is expected to resonate. Furthermore, with capacity expansion exceeding expectations and overseas equipment manufacturers facing prolonged delivery cycles, the semiconductor equipment sector might advance from import substitution to a comprehensive global expansion phase. Delivery cycles for FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Arrays), CPUs (Central Processing Units), GPUs (Graphics Processing Units), and driver chips have significantly lengthened. Semiconductor equipment is severely affected by shortages of core components, and delivery cycles for equipment from core semiconductor equipment manufacturers have similarly lengthened. Domestic semiconductor equipment manufacturers are expected to gradually move into overseas markets,迎来 a Davis Double."
However, Wang Youcao also cautioned, "As the overall valuation of the technology sector expands, looking forward, market divergence may become more intense. It is anticipated that market attention may continue to concentrate on semiconductor equipment and other sectors with solid industrial fundamentals, clear earnings realization, and long-term growth logic. Such directions may advance to new levels amidst repeated分歧, while purely conceptual炒作, earnings-unsupported, and sentiment-driven标的 may持续 be abandoned by the market's gaze."
Wu Hao also reminded: "After continuous rises, price fluctuations for标的 within the泛AI industry will inevitably increase, and their sensitivity to disturbances from policy, risk appetite, and liquidity will undoubtedly be amplified. The recent剧烈 volatility in the Nasdaq, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index, and China's A-share STAR Market has already reminded us. We are likely entering a period of fundamental testing next, where divergence may further intensify. Short-term volatility and even阶段性 pullbacks are normal."
Comments