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Travel notes: Hong Kong

Visiting the Weird Shit Investing conference

Michael Fritzell

Michael Fritzell

— 8 min read
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Travel notes: Hong Kong
The view from Lugard Road on The Peak, Hong Kong Island
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I just came back from two days in Hong Kong, where I visited Swen Lorenz's excellent Weird Shit Investing conference.

My last time in Hong Kong was back in 2024 – another trip organized by Swen. Compared to 2024, Hong Kong felt a lot more vibrant this time around. Bars were full, and people seemed to be enjoying themselves.

Elgin Street, Hong Kong

Hong Kong has of course changed, on the margin. There's a lot more talent from Mainland China, replacing some of the expats and locals who left. Some of the waitresses and shopkeepers I interacted with didn't speak English at all, which is a break from the past.

Another change is the large number of Chinese electric vehicles on the street. From the airport, we took a roomy electric taxi made by China's Geely, and it felt comfortable and modern.

While I knew that Claude and ChatGPT had been banned, it still surprised me. So I installed Chinese LLMs like Deepseek, which worked just fine. Though still lagging behind its Western counterparts, in my view.

Otherwise, Hong Kong remains a pleasant experience. The density of Hong Kong Island is unmatched anywhere in Asia, and that makes it a perfect place to do business. You can meet up with people within minutes, as long as their workplace or home is close to Central. As I've argued in the past, Hong Kong's death has been greatly exaggerated.

While I only spent two days in Hong Kong, I did visit a Best Mart 360 store, and it was fine. 0.5kg of Kirkland dried blueberries cost me HK$87 (US$11) and 90g of Ferrero chocolate cost me HK$22 (US$2.8). Certainly cheaper than what it would cost in Singapore, at the very least.

I also walked by a Pop Mart store, and was surprised to see that it front display had mostly non-Labubu items. The store was almost completely empty, with 4 staff serving a single customer. It does look like the Labubu craze is over. That said, many bulls continue to think that the current downturn for Pop Mart is just a blip in a longer-term growth story.

A Pop Mart store at HKIA

The conference itself took place at Eaton Club in Citibank Plaza. We were close to 20 participants, and a dozen of us held presentations on specific stocks.

I presented on Korean terminal operating software developer Total Soft Bank (045340 KS – US$36 million), which I first saw mentioned by hedge fund manager Ryan Albert in mid-May 2026.

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