"It's better to buy bank stocks than to keep money in the bank", an old saying in the investment world, most of the people in the current market environment are ignored. But the truth is, there is nothing wrong with it at all. Today, Agricultural Bank of China's A shares rose 1.34%, reaching a maximum of 3.78 yuan per share, hitting a record high.
In 2023, ABC's share price rose 35.32% against the overall recession of the A-share market, and has continued to rise by 3.57% since January this year.
As an analogy, at present, the interest rate on one-year fixed deposits and withdrawals of banks is 1.45 percent, and the interest rate on two-year certificates of deposit is 1.9 percent.
Money outperforms 85% of investors in terms of survival?
In 2023, China's capital market fluctuated violently, with the Shanghai Composite Index falling 3.7% during the year, the Shenzhen Component Index falling 13.54%, and the ChiNext Index falling 19.41%. In such a market environment, it is an indisputable fact that the "feeling" of the vast majority of investors will not be too good.
In the first 3 days of 2024, the "good start" market that investors were looking forward to did not appear, and the GEM index fell for three consecutive days. After the closing, some investors 'mended', "I will survive in 2023, and my income will outperform 85% of investors." This sentence has made many investors who still stick to the A-share market break their defenses.
Lulu, a post-90s investor in Hangzhou, told reporters, "My investment fund has been losing money for 3 consecutive years, and the first 2 years were losses of more than -20%, and in the last few days of last year, it was slightly back to reduce the annual loss to less than -20%, but it is still very painful to think about the money lost in the account." There is no big goal this year, and it is still to return to the cost. ”
Compared with the big bull market of public funds from 2019 to 2020, the people who have stuck to the fund to "be friends of time" in the past two years will not feel better than shareholders. According to the data, in 2023, among nearly 2,300 equity funds, only 92 products will have a return of more than 10%, of which the highest rate of return will be less than 38%, and 1,855 products will have a negative return, and the lowest product will have a return of less than -41%. Among the more than 4,500 hybrid funds, only 2 products have a return of more than 50%, 87 products have a return of more than 10%, and most products have a return of between -10% and 10%.
Ms. Kimin Wang complained, "The most regrettable decision in the past two years is to invest in funds, and in the past year, I have invested in a total of 20 funds through one-time purchase and regular investment. There are both hybrid funds, as well as stock theme funds (such as the first two years of the hot new energy theme fund, large consumption fund), as well as individual pension funds, fund managers such as Zhang Kun, Feng Mingyuan, Zhao Yi and other star fund managers, but a year down 20 funds none of the profits, almost a loss of more than 30%, a little better also 5 or 6 points of loss, even the individual pension fund also lost 7%. ”
In November last year, the personal pension system was launched, and four types of products, including pension funds, bank wealth management, savings deposits, and commercial insurance, were included in the shelves. A year has passed, and the fund's return rate is at the bottom of the four categories. Wind data shows that there are 179 individual pension funds in the whole market, and more than ninety percent of them have lost money since their establishment, with an average return of -4.47%. "If you didn't invest in funds two years ago and kept your money in the bank, the low deposit rate would not be the same as it is now. Ms. Wang said, "Even if you don't do anything during the survival period, you still have an interest rate of 0.2% a year, so it's no wonder that others say that the money outperforms 85% of investors during the survival period." “
The exception is bank stocks
Let's recall a few figures, the current interest rate of one-year fixed deposit is 1.45%, the interest rate of one-year large certificates of deposit is 1.7%, and the interest rate of two-year large certificates of deposit is 1.9%, while the median return of equity funds in 2023 is -13.75%, with an average of -13.28%, and nearly 92% of equity funds lose money, and nearly seventy percent of them lose more than 10%.
In addition, the Shanghai Composite Index fell by 3.7% during the year, the Shenzhen Component Index fell by 13.54%, and the ChiNext Index fell by 19.41%. However, bank stocks are an exception in 2023. In addition to the above-mentioned Agricultural Bank of China, whose stock price hit a record high today, the four major banks (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, Bank of China and China Construction Bank) will rise by 18.32%, 35.32%, 36.18% and 24.24% respectively in 2023. "It's better to buy bank shares than to save in a bank" has become a reality.
Behind the sharp rise in bank stocks is precisely the very popular high-dividend and high-dividend strategy in recent years. Statistics show that since 2021, the high-dividend strategy has outperformed the benchmark index for three consecutive years. In this regard, CICC pointed out in a recent research report that, on the whole, the essence of the high-dividend strategy is to provide stable returns in a macro environment with declining returns, and its core lies in stable returns and relative returns. Historically, high-dividend strategies have outperformed benchmark indices when interest rates are falling and there is no clear industry trend and investment line. From the perspective of asset pricing, if the gap between return on investment and financing cost narrows, the high-dividend strategy has a greater chance of outperforming the overall market, which is often the pressure on the macro environment and the overall market downturn.
In March and October 2022, the Shanghai Stock Exchange and China Securities Index Company (CSI) successively revised the compilation plans of the SSE Dividend Series and CSI Dividend Series Indices to further strengthen the sustainability of the index's dividends and high dividend yield, while also enhancing the index's investment capacity and liquidity. Up to now, including SSE Dividend, CSI Dividend, Dividend Low Volatility, etc., the overall scale of dividend index products has exceeded 63 billion yuan, doubling the scale at the end of 2022.
In the eyes of industry insiders, "bank stocks have always been suitable for long-term investment in the capital market because of their relatively stable income and dividends." From the perspective of asset security, banks are strictly regulated industries with sufficient capital and liquidity, which also makes bank stocks perennially sought after by long-term funds such as social security and pensions. Of course, this does not mean that investing in bank stocks is risk-free, investors need to fully consider the changes in the economic cycle and the financial quality of listed banks when investing in bank stocks, and if the economy is expected to pick up, then bank stocks that are sensitive to the economic cycle will obviously benefit from this. “