Monday morning links

Sep 06, 2021

Japanese PM Suga resigned: Yoshihide Suga announced that he would resign as Japan’s prime minister to focus fully on dealing with COVID-19.
Chinese crackdown on negative news: The Chinese government has begun a two-month campaign to take action against those who “bad-mouth China’s financial markets and falsely interpret domestic policies and economic data”. This might put analysts’ credibility into question since they will be forced to lean bullish.
Beijing Stock Exchange: Xi Jinping announced plans to set up a stock exchange in Beijing to compete with those in Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Potential Evergrande bankruptcy: Creditors demand immediate repayment of their loans to China Evergrande, the world’s most indebted company. I wrote about Evergrande on VIC a few years ago here.
Indonesian QE: Bank Indonesia is starting to monetise US$31bn worth of government debt. It remains to be seen how this will affect the US Dollar / Rupiah exchange rate.

Company-specific reports

($ = behind a paywall)

I wrote a deep-dive on a Hong Kong small-cap COVID-19 recovery bet with a strong balance sheet (SEHK: ? — <US$200 million) ($)
I wrote another report weighing the bull and bear cases for Japanese electronics giant Sony (TSE: 6758 — US$134 billion)
Daniel Tabbush on Thai bank TISCO Financial (SET: TISCO — US$2.3 billion)
Choivo Capital on Cambodian casino operator Nagacorp (SEHK: 3918 — US$3.2 billion). Note the recent insider buying.
Patches AKF Substack on PAX Global Technology (SEHK: 327 — US$1.5 billion)

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

Swen Lorenz was kind enough to feature Asian Century Stocks as “a blog to watch” on his website (4 mins)
Wickhams Hill’s Under the Radar report dated 4 September 2021 (15 mins)
Aswath Damodaran on the ongoing crackdown on Chinese tech stocks (20 mins)
Another George Soros op-ed on China, this time in the Financial Times (4 mins)
Harvard professor Kenneth Rogoff: Back to the 1970s style stagflation? (5 mins)
Nikkei comparing Xi’s recent policies to those of Mao in the 1950s (4 mins) ($)
Nikkei on Japan’s first hostile takeover by a hedge fund ever (4 mins) ($)

Bank analyst Daniel Tabbush on Asian banking stocks (47 mins)
Smartkarma’s Henry Soediarko on his favourite sectors in Indonesia (37 mins)
China Tech Investor interviewing Michael Norris on Kuaishou, Tencent and Xiaomi’s earnings (1:16 hours)
Adam Tooze and Matt Klein on China’s economic history (1:21 hours)
Grizzly Research’s Siegfried Eggert on Chinese frauds (1:00 hours)
Historian William Dalrymple on the lessons from Afghanistan (58 mins)

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