Aaron Boesky vindicated by A-share market bottom

On July 6, 2010, Aaron Boesky, the CEO of Marco Polo Investments and director of Marco Polo Pure China Fund, spoke to AsianInvestor for a story that we published the following day under the headline: ‘Marco Polo’s Aaron Boesky calls a China market floor’.

He said: “We're calling a bottom in July 2010, and think we are accurate on this call. The reasons being that Shanghai is near the lowest valuation level in history and, at the same time, it is seeing very strong fundamental strength both in profits and in the general economy.”

The Shanghai A-share market had closed on July 5 at 2,477 points.

With such a bold call, and mindful how seldom (usually never) market punditry is ever held to account later on, we made a diary note to revisit this prediction this year.

It must have been ominous prescience, because that July 5 number turned out to be a multi-year market floor, to the exact day.

Boesky went on to say that he thought the A-share index could get past 3,400 points in 2010. That seemed like a very long way away at the time, but it got darn close, peaking at 3,309 points on November 8.

The A-share index finished 2010 at 2,940 points, compared to 3,437 points the year before. Therefore it was a market fall of about 15% for the year.

Marco Polo had a very good year in that context, finishing slightly up for 2010. Their personnel bench was also boosted by the hiring of Lincoln Leung as their new COO from Sail in Hong Kong.

We asked Boesky if he wanted to make an A-share index prediction for this year. He says 3,750 points by year-end.