Eastern city consumption falls more than 20% within the year, with two fund managers resulting in a bottom-ten ranking.

文|Wu Lixiang

Source|Wealth Unicorn

With the trading days before Qingming Festival coming to an end, the ranking of mainland China’s actively managed equity open-end funds has shown an increasingly clear two-tier split: the number-one product, GF Vision Smart Select net value growth rate, is already above 60%, but at the same time there are also about 15 products that have fallen by more than 20%, such as the Eastern Town Consumption Theme established at the end of May 2019.

By the end of trading on April 3, the fund’s net value growth rate in 2026 was only -22.20%. Among the 5,064 funds in its peer group, it ranked 5,055th, placing it among the bottom ten in its peer group. Looking at the rankings from the prior two years, the fund also remained in a relatively back position among comparable products. As a result, in the current annualized return rankings for the same time period, the fund ranked 711th out of 713 similar products.

Currently, the fund is jointly managed by Wang Ran and Cai Shangjun. However, their total returns for their current tenures are -33.29% and -25.51%, respectively. The “female veteran” Wang Ran has been on the job for nearly 11 years in cumulative terms. Cai Shangjun, who started in February 2024, has a cumulative tenure of more than 2 years.

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A major collapse in the two consumption-themed holdings—questions arise about veteran Wang Ran’s ability circle

The website 天天基金网 shows that she has a master’s degree in industrial economics from Beijing Jiaotong University. She has served as an industry research analyst at Yimin Fund for transportation, textiles and apparel, and light industrial manufacturing. She previously served as Deputy General Manager of the equity research department at Eastern Fund, and as an analyst in equity investments for transportation, textiles and apparel, and commercial retail.

Right now, the total size of the three funds she manages combined is only 186 million yuan, but her best period returns on the managed funds are -26.46%. Looking closely at these three funds, they are respectively Eastern Emerging Growth Hybrid Fund, which she has managed for over 10 years; Eastern Town Consumption Theme Hybrid Fund, which she began managing at the end of May 2019; and Eastern Quality Consumption One-Year Holding Period Hybrid Fund, which she began managing at the beginning of July 2021.

The latter two are both consumption-theme products. But based on the current situation in 2026, none of the three funds has achieved positive returns. Even the best performer, Eastern Emerging Growth, has a net value decline of only 4.10%, while the worst is the Eastern Town Consumption Theme Hybrid Fund mentioned above.

Specifically, regarding this fund’s situation: judging from the top ten holdings in last year’s Q4 report, assuming this portfolio’s holdings have not changed for the time being, there are only two companies that have risen from the beginning of the year to date during the same period: Shouyao Holding-U and Pharmaron Beijing. However, Pharmaron Beijing was only the tenth largest holding at the end of last year. Looking at the eight companies that have fallen, the worst performer is Top Group, one of the industry’s robotics leaders. In addition, the fund’s first-largest holding, Yuekang Pharmaceutical, has also fallen by about 15% from the beginning of the year to date.

Comparing last year’s Q4 report top holdings with those in the Q3 report, it is possible to see that the two fund managers have broadly switched their underlying stocks. On one side, among the previous five top holdings, the fund manager removed the top four—Olin Biotech, Yipinhong, Sanhua Zhikong, and Luxshare Precision—leaving only Pharmaron Beijing. Similar changes also occurred among the bottom five holdings: the fund manager kept only Mango Super Media, while removing Huace Film & TV, Perfect World, NuoWei Technology, and Junshi Bio-U from the portfolio.

In the latest disclosed annual report of the fund, the fund manager stated: “In the current period, the product continues to maintain a configuration strategy that combines top-down selected industries with bottom-up selected leading companies. In the top-down approach, by analyzing multiple factors such as the industry’s life cycle, competitive landscape, and industry policies, we select high-quality consumption sectors that fit the product’s thematic definition and have room for long-term growth. We are optimistic about optional consumption areas such as pharmaceuticals, healthcare and beauty, media, and consumer electronics that will benefit from population aging and have long-term growth potential. In the bottom-up approach, we will continue to carry out a comprehensive assessment from the perspectives of long term, value, and growth, and select better companies to strive to deliver long-term returns to investors.”

However, the Q4 report also warned of liquidation risk: “During the reporting period, due to redemptions by fund unit holders, the fund had circumstances in which its net asset value remained below 50 million yuan for 60 consecutive working days. The fund manager has reported this to the China Securities Regulatory Commission and is planning measures such as continuous marketing, converting the way the fund operates, merging with other funds, or terminating the fund contract.”

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Another vivid “portfolio painting” of Eastern Emerging Growth’s top holdings

Where exactly does Wang Ran’s real ability circle lie?

Leaving aside that Eastern Town Consumption Theme is currently jointly managed by the two of them, the other two funds mentioned above are managed solely by Wang Ran, but the outlook is still not optimistic.

First, look at Eastern Quality Consumption One-Year Holding Period Hybrid Fund, which is also consumption-themed. This fund has even had no year with positive annual returns since 2022. Therefore, its latest annualized return is -19.94%, ranking 1909th out of 1912 similar funds. But according to last year’s Q4 report, the industry of its top holdings overlaps very little with that of Eastern Town Consumption Theme; none of the holdings in the top list comes from the pharmaceutical sector.

However, the pairing—both having only two companies that can rise within the year—are Yutong Bus and Perfect World. At the same time, there are already three companies whose stock prices have dropped by more than 20% within the year: Top Group, Dongpeng Beverage, and Changbaishan. Meanwhile, compared with the previous quarter, the fund manager removed two of the three Hong Kong stocks in the top holdings: Pop Mart and Alibaba Group Holding-W.

In terms of scale: although the fund has not sounded a liquidation warning, its scale is still precarious, and the product is becoming increasingly small.

Next, for Eastern Emerging Growth, which is not a consumption-theme product: the reason its performance is slightly better than the other two consumption-themed products may be because the underlying holdings it selected include those that have risen by more than 10% within the year, namely Yutong Bus, Goldwind Science & Technology, and Perfect World. Looking at the characteristics of the tracks, it still shows some differences. For example, this product’s allocation to gold stocks includes Shandong Gold and Zijin Mining; likewise, it has allocated to China Taiping and China Eastern Airlines. While its investment thinking is outwardly diversified, it also reflects that Wang Ran still lacks confidence behind that diversification, because in the portfolio, the holding-weight of every underlying stock is below 4%.

In the fund’s annual report, Wang Ran stated: “In terms of industry selection, in the first half, this product allocated to areas benefiting from policy support such as home appliances and automobiles, as well as increased allocation to robots, semiconductors, and other areas representing new quality productive forces. In the second half, as market risk appetite increased and subsidy policies declined, this product reduced its holdings of parts of the home appliance and automobile industries, and increased allocation to cyclical products that benefit from rising commodity prices, such as non-ferrous metals and chemical industries. By the end of the year, the product’s main allocation directions included non-ferrous metals, basic chemicals, and new materials; power equipment, electronics, automobiles, machinery; pharmaceuticals; transportation; and social services. In selecting individual stocks, through analyses of multiple factors including listed companies’ management level, business structure, and financial data, we focus on allocating to industry leading companies with core competitiveness and long-term growth potential.” It can be seen that although the fund manager covers too many industries, in practice she does not seem to have such ability.

Author’s statement: personal opinions, for reference only