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Today's situation has turned the "financial giants" into a bad thing. In the past, there were real estate giants represented by Evergrande, and then there were Cedar Holdings, and now the financial giant Zhongzhi system has come to an end. Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People's Court announced: the debtor Zhongzhi Enterprise Group applied to the court for bankruptcy liquidation on the grounds that it could not pay off its due debts, its assets were insufficient to pay off all its debts, and it obviously lacked solvency. After review, it was believed that the application of Zhongzhi Group met the reasons for bankruptcy stipulated in the Enterprise Bankruptcy Law of the People's Republic of China, so on January 5, it "ruled to accept the bankruptcy liquidation application of Zhongzhi Enterprise Group". Founded in 1995, Zhongzhi has more than 1,500 companies, including the four major wealth companies. The industry covers trust, insurance, public offering, private equity, finance, real estate, education, science and technology, new energy and other fields. The scale of assets it holds, participates in and manages, reaches 36 trillion yuan. Proper behemoth. A proper financial behemoth. It's not just itself. It represents the end of the previous era, the end of that model of wealth creation, and the end of the logic of social development. A basic rule is:Every time the social model changes, a few old nobles will be killed to worship the sky. I just don't know, can you smell a strange smell from the fallen dust of these old nobles? 2
The magic of the beginning of 2024 is just a continuation of the magic of the past few years. Ukraine has started a large-scale attack on the Russian mainland; The DPRK declared that the north and the south were no longer one people, and immediately opened artillery demonstrations in the adjacent waters; The Houthis exchanged direct fire with the US ......In contrast to the barrage, central banks continue to buy in large quantities**. According to the latest data released by the World ** Association, global central bank purchases** increased by 14% year-on-year in the first three quarters of 2023 to a record 800 tons! Among them, the central banks of China, Poland and Singapore are the main buyers - China has increased its holdings for 11 consecutive months, becoming the world's largest buyer this year (reserves reached 2,191 tons, the world's sixth, the United States first 8,100 tons, Germany second 3,300 tons). This is the first vision. The second vision is that wages are declining at a rate that is visible to the naked eye. In the fourth quarter of 2023, the average monthly salary of recruitment in 38 core cities across the country decreased by 1. year-on-year3%, down to 10,420 yuan. This is the largest drop since 2016. It is also the third consecutive quarter of decline. For example, Beijing fell by 2 year-on-year7%, Guangzhou fell by 45%。In the past thirty or forty years, everyone has long been accustomed to growth. Grow, grow, grow. GDP growth, wage growth, insight growth, material abundance. The fall of giants is not just giants. Its floating dust will contaminate every ordinary person, like the dust raised by iron hooves to cover ants. In the days to come, we need to re-understand and adapt to it. The third vision, the investment from the opposite mainland, has dropped sharply. Direct investment in mainland China has dropped sharply in 2023, accounting for only 12% of its total investment, a record low. At the same time, however, foreign direct investment (87 percent year-on-year in November) is still growing sharply, while direct investment in the United States is nine times higher than in the same period last year, and investment in Germany is 25 times higher than in the same period last year. Thinking back to the highlight of 2010, it is no longer what it used to be. 3
The fourth vision, which is not a vision. It is still the inertia of the fall of the old aristocracy. An "unknown" rating agency downgraded the ratings of four asset management companies on January 4. Downgrade Cinda and Dongfang from "A" to "A-", and Huarong and Great Wall from "BBB+" to "BBB". He even "hypocritically" said that the downward adjustment was due to the weakening of monetary support and the sluggish housing market, and there may be further downward adjustments in the future. Correspondingly, the pattern of the property market has changed greatly. On the one hand, new projects in the suburbs are desperately discounted, and there are new projects in a second-tier city2% off (not stopped); On the other hand, Changsha and Chengdu grabbed the land king, and the premiums of the two land parcels in the core area were as high as 43% and 36% respectively. On the one hand, the rent in the first-tier cities is in the first place, and the rent of luxury houses is even diving, but on the other hand, the coal boss is entering the market, taking land and building in Chengdu, Beijing, and Shanghai. New houses cannot be sold, and the proportion of second-hand housing transactions has hit a record high: in 2023, the proportion of second-hand housing transactions in 30 cities will reach 53%, which is the first time in history that it exceeds first-hand houses, and the transaction volume of second-hand houses in the country also accounts for 37% of all transactions1%, also a record high. This is equivalent to an official announcement that real estate has entered the era of stock. Finally, it is on par with developed countries. It is said to be a vision, but it is not a vision. The grass gray snake line, the veins are thousands of miles. The wind rose in 2018. 4
How to deal with it? In the next five years, everyone should be mentally prepared. And, be materially prepared – the way you think about wealth management is about to change. My personal principles are:See more and move less; If you can, don't move; Immobility is victory. That is to say, the previous way of greedy for more and more aggressive leverage will be completely discarded. In fact, you can see from the name "Evergrande" that it is no longer in line with the style of today's times. Increasing leverage and seeking to grow in wealth would have snowballed in the first 30 years, but now it is categorically not feasible. The idea for the future is:Be safe and hedge. Prudent refers to the transition from a high-risk and high-return track to a low-risk and low-return track; Hedging refers to the allocation of both internal and external assets. You know what I'm talking about. So to be specific, one of the tracks that can combine "security" and "hedging" is Hong Kong insurance. The essence of buying insurance in Hong Kong is:Allocate foreign currency assets prudently. If you buy it in RMB now, it will be returned to you in the future: US dollars, Australian dollars, Singapore dollars, British pounds, etc. Well, without further ado. Once you understand the essence of it, everything else is minutiae.