• Asia is catching up in vaccinations: Japan’s vaccination rate has overtaken that of the United States. South Korea is not far behind.

• Thailand re-opening: Thailand is re-opening to foreign tourists. It will scrap quarantine requirements for all pilot areas this year

• Macau casinos: The government plans to increase local ownership of Macau casinos. A new gaming law proposes for the sub-concession system to be removed. US casinos’ 2022 Macau concession renewals might be at risk.

• Chinese anti-trust regulation: WeChat and AliPay are opening up their platforms to third-party links

• Hong Kong tycoons: Early signs of a crackdown on Hong Kong tycoons, compelling them to contribute to Beijing’s Common Prosperity drive

• Mainstream stock ideas: This table with 1-year returns for the favourite stocks on Finance Twitter shows that popular stocks tend to underperform

Asian stock ideas

($ = behind a paywall)

• I wrote a deep-dive on Indonesian dairy company Ultrajaya Milk (IDX: ULTJ — US$1.1 billion)

• I wrote a post weighing the bull & bear cases for Ping An Insurance (SEHK: 2318 — US$81 billion) ($)

• Punch Card Investor on e-commerce stock Sea Ltd (Part 1) (NYSE: SE — US$188 billion)

• A quick note on Kazakhstan uranium miner KazAtomprom from the “searching 4 value” blog (LSE: KAP — US$10.2 billion). Also note this comment from the company’s Chief Commercial Officer.

Long-form writing

(estimated reading time) ($ = behind a paywall)

• Bank analyst Daniel Tabbush on how Thai banks are likely to benefit from Thailand’s re-opening (2 mins)

• Variant Perception: EM local currency debt underperforms in hiking regimes (1 min)

• Harvard Business Review & Bain: Founder-led companies outperform the rest (5 mins)

• John Authers: Executives using complex language produce lower returns (8 mins) ($)

• Adam Tooze summarising the news flow on property developer China Evergrande (9 mins)

• Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital weighs in on China Evergrande, discussing what a restructuring of the company might look like (7 mins)

• Niall Ferguson: Will Xi move on Taiwan? History warns he might (13 mins)

• Semi-Literate Substack: Mapping US chip company exposure to China (9 mins)

Podcasts and videos

(listening time) ($ = behind a paywall)

• Howard Marks discussing market cycles (1:08 hours)

• Ex-housing bear John Paulson interviewed by David Rubinstein (24 mins)

• Mark Spitznagel is bearish (and selling a new book) (26 mins)

• China-based tech analyst Dan Wang explains the tech crackdown (49 mins)

• SCMP tech journalist John Artman discussing China’s tech regulation (1:05 hours)

• Angelica Oung from the Taiwan-focused Taipology Substack on the Compounding Curiosity podcast (45 mins)

• Asianometry: How Chinese state-owned Tsinghua Unigroup tried to roll up overseas semiconductor IP (15 mins)

• Peter Zeihan: Why has the PRC not taken Taiwan? (5 mins)

• Mike Green interviewing Louis Gave discussing Chinese politics on Real Vision TV (1:25 hours) ($)

Chart of the week – China’s excess reserve ratio has started ticking up

Thanks for reading, and I wish you a great week ahead!

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