Market insights and commentary from Eastspring Investments.

Eastspring Investments' CIO Rudie Chan examines the structural growth drivers of global Islamic finance, including AUM trends (8.5% CAGR 2004–2016), demographic tailwinds, and the expanding sukuk market, while acknowledging ongoing challenges around fees, governance, and standardisation. The piece highlights Malaysia's dominant role in the global Shariah investment ecosystem and forecasts continued institutional adoption, notably from sovereign wealth funds and pension schemes.

Eastspring Investments analyzes China's total debt-to-GDP ratio exceeding 250% (end-2016), focusing on corporate sector leverage, SOE misallocation, shadow banking risks, and the government's controlled deleveraging efforts. The piece concludes that a systemic banking crisis is not imminent given China's high savings rate, capital controls, and state ownership of banks, while identifying selective value opportunities in China's offshore bond market.

Eastspring Investments argues that behavioural biases such as loss aversion and heuristic-driven herding create persistent mispricings in global emerging market equities that disciplined value investors can exploit for long-term outperformance. The piece presents empirical GEM factor performance data showing value outperforming momentum, quality, and growth styles over time, and outlines a framework for identifying sustainable earnings and managing behavioural risk.
Eastspring Investments examines the investment case for cryptocurrencies, covering their use cases, security vulnerabilities, regulatory landscape, and available investment vehicles such as direct ownership, ICOs, mining, and futures. The firm concludes that Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not suitable assets for long-term investors at this stage, citing excessive volatility, lack of regulation, and significant security risks.

Eastspring Investments examines how retail-investor dominance in China's A-share market creates persistent behavioural biases—including lottery effects, availability heuristics, and herding—that active, value-oriented managers can exploit. The paper outlines Eastspring's contrarian, fundamentals-driven investment process, including ESG integration, and highlights cyclical stocks as potentially oversold amid 2018 US-China trade tensions.