The Hang Seng trade is now working out/More mixed earnings commentary, the good and not so good

For newer readers, my first contrarian investment idea entering 2024 was to get long the Hang Seng index and stocks in it. Valuations were ridiculously cheap, the sentiment was god awful and the daily China bashing was as loud as can be. If you didn't see, yesterday it finally exceeded the performance of the S&P 500 year to date after starting January down 10%. It's also rallied for 9 straight days and higher by 8.4% year to date not including generous dividends. We remain bullish and long stocks catering to not just the Chinese consumer but the Asian consumer generally, like Trip.com and AIA Group, along with Macau casino stocks, which have definitely lagged, and others along with some ETFs there and in other countries in the Asian region. 

I will repeat my belief that the growing middle class in Asia is the most exciting economic growth story when looking out over the next 10 years. We get so US centric here but forget that half the world's population lives in Asia. Even in China, the size of their middle class will go from an estimated 400 million people to 800 million over the next 5-10 years. Rising wealth in India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore etc... are not to be ignored from an investing standpoint. 

Before I get to the earnings calls, we saw the BoJ intervene again a few days ago, last week the Bank Indonesia hiked rates to defend the rupiah and today the Bank of Korea Governor said they might put off rate cuts in order to defend the Korean Won. "Whether the rate cut timing will be pushed back, how much it will be pushed if it is, or if it will even come will be the question that needs to be reviewed. I wouldn't call it starting from scratch. But the situation has changed since April." The Won is higher by 1% vs the US dollar in response. 

More mixed commentary from earnings calls on the economy. 

From Apple:

"As we push innovation forward, we continue to manage thoughtfully and deliberately through an uneven macroeconomic environment."

From Live Nation, a stock we own and in a business that continues to rock n' roll, pun intended:

"So just to make sure we hit hard on the consumer demand, we are seeing no weakness. The things that we look at that give us an indication of how the shows are selling, how the fans are spending when they go to the site, all continue to be very strong...We're consistently seeing the sell-through of the shows are at or above where they were last year and that the overall grosses for the artists are consistently higher. So no issues at all on fan demand relative to last summer."

From Booking Holdings, benefiting from leisure/travel: