Old habits die hard. Often, when a sector rallies from bombed-out levels on hopes of a turnround, investors buy the poorest quality companies. The logic goes that the lowest quality stocks were hardest hit on the way down, and these businesses thus have the most to gain from recovery. For shares in Chinese property developers, this time has been no different.
Between the end of June and the beginning of July, the MSCI China property index rallied by over a fifth, making up in one month all the ground lost since January.
Non-index member Greentown more than doubled that return, bouncing by nearly a half from June lows. By comparison, blue-chip China Overseas Land and Investment returned only 26 per cent – better than the index, but worse than its lower-quality listed affiliate China Overseas Grand Oceans. COGO managed a rise of 34 per cent, despite a profit warning in mid-July.