Wei Yao: Win with logic.
2007- 10-8 Source: china securities journal.
Guotai Junan is a productive place with well-known industry researchers. Two of them are chief researchers, both of whom are famous: one is Li Zhixian, and the other is Wei Yao.
This "section chief" is actually equivalent to the deputy director of the institute. Because of their qualifications, influence and persistent research for many years, some people jokingly call them "hardcore" researchers. However, people who meet for the first time will be surprised to find that Wei Yao, who has heard his name for a long time, turned out to be a tall and thin young man who is only 30 years old and modest.
Born in a bull market, born in a bear market.
Wei Yao, 30, is young and full of vigor, but for a chief researcher who has worked in the industry for six or seven years, he can be called an "old revolution". Wei Yao's research focuses on electricity and other public utilities. Influenced by its leading research logic and research report, and as a consultant of SASAC and many listed companies, it has a high degree of recognition and recognition in the power industry and listed companies, and is often regarded as the "leading brother" by new researchers in the industry.
At present, Guotai Junan has studied more than 80 people, a considerable number of whom have been employed for less than three years, and less than 40% have been employed for more than five years. Wei Yao thinks he is the product of the last bull market.
When the market was good in 2000, the stock market continued to rise to 2000 points, and brokers expanded the number of researchers on a large scale without limiting the industry threshold. Wei Yao, who studied physics in Tsinghua for seven years, joined Guotai Junan as an analyst at the end of 20001. "At that time, graduates with various academic backgrounds entered this industry." However, when Wei Yao entered this industry, people didn't do much in-depth research, and the company paid much less attention to research. In addition, the persistent bear market was a hard time for many people in the securities industry. However, Wei Yao didn't waste his time. In the years since 2002, Wei Yao has produced about 1.5 reports per week on average, exceeding 70 reports per year, which is the largest workload in the industry. I once wrote 14 research reports about Huaneng International in one year. The cruel bear market has also trained a large number of researchers who firmly believe in value investment in Guotai Junan Institute.
Until later, the concept of value investment was recognized and verified by the market, and the research changed from "cover" to "muzzle". In the chain of securities companies, almost all business is related to research. From brokerage business, investment bank mergers and acquisitions, self-operated business to investment business and internal management, all need to be studied. The leaders of Guotai Junan Company attach unprecedented importance to the research institute. More than half of the CEOs of Guotai Junan's sales department went out from the institute. In the words of the company president, "only professionals can eat."
Wei Yao said that the bull market is a good stage and the greatest happiness for researchers. "Elephants can dance in the bull market. For a person who wants to be a conductor, if he is facing a hibernating bear, even if the action is beautiful, there is no sense of accomplishment. " While thanking the bull market, Wei Yao is still rational. He said that analysts should be the most rational people in the market, even when everyone is enjoying the bubble.
"In the past, our Guotai Junan Institute was very uncomfortable, because there were many old researchers and we experienced many ups and downs. Many events were considered important at the time, but after the timeline was lengthened, it was actually a small wave. " Wei Yao also admitted that older researchers are less sensitive, while big-name researchers are relatively cautious. Although a senior researcher is well-connected and experienced, he may be too conservative, miss some market opportunities and be complained by customers, so he is under great pressure. Some investment managers laughed at them: you are all from a bear market, covered in bear hair and not much hair. "If we lag behind the market, we must change it. In addition, if the market is too irrational, we will definitely avoid it. Let customers continue to make money rationally, and customers can understand. Although commanding elephants is very fulfilling, it is also terrible for elephants to go crazy and may be trampled to death. You can't go crazy with elephants. "
From Little Black Horse to Big White Horse
At present, the research in Wei Yao covers 16 companies in the power industry, among which 13 companies are in the position of index stocks. Speaking of classics, Wei Yao is very happy: "For example, Huaneng International, some people commented that it is my favorite." Wei Yao wrote a lot about this company which was branded as Wei Yao. Every rise in market evaluation is directly related to Wei Yao, and every fall may be accompanied by some judgments on Wei Yao.
Electricity is a big industry. A few years ago, its market position was almost equivalent to that of bank stocks. This industry has produced many excellent analysts and many excellent investment managers. For example, there are fund managers such as South, E Fund and Morgan Stanley. Who is the researcher in the power industry ... The steady growth of this industry brings many opportunities, and Wei Yao feels that everyone's mentality is relatively stable.
Wei Yao said, "I am a typical risk-averse person with a conservative personality, which coincides with the characteristics of the industry I studied. Public utilities are completely defensive. " Wei Yao will only recommend it to customers if he has a special understanding of the company, and customers will gradually get familiar with his personality and accept his prudent research attitude and rich research experience.
SDIC Power is a perfect case of discovering value created by Wei Yao. At the beginning of 2004, when st Company was reorganized, Wei Yao began to recommend it. At present, the company basically belongs to the first-line white horse company recognized by the market. Of course, the process of value discovery is usually: at first, everyone doubts his recommendation, then there are differences, and then everyone agrees with him. Now, Wei Yao thinks it is necessary to fade out the research on companies, because the marginal benefit of research is relatively low and new investment opportunities are needed in the case of homogenization of opinions. "Watching it change from a small black horse to a big white horse is still very enjoyable." Wei Yao said.
Later, during the excavation of Baoxin Energy and Jinshan, Wei Yao thought that they changed their research ideas and looked at the industry. The reason for saying this is that in the past, electric power was a big company and believed in the "survival theory". The state-owned core companies were originally good companies. Jinshan shares and Baoxin energy, two listed companies with private backgrounds, grabbed a small share from the market. Their market-oriented system and mechanism, project optimization ability, keen market vision, excellent cost control and good use of capital market resources have made the company develop rapidly and supernormally, and also made Wei Yao have a different understanding of the industry. "The power industry is different from other companies, with relatively small fluctuations and stable returns. The more decisive factor is at the front end. If the front part is solved, there will be no big pressure on the back end. " He said, "the investigation of power companies does not need to climb into the boiler to see it, because power companies are standardized." At that time, other researchers recommended it, but Wei Yao's analytical logic and methods were obviously more accepted by the market. Since his recommendation, Baoxin Energy's share price has performed amazingly, rising by 10 times in one year.
In the bull market from 2006 to now, the recommendations of leading companies such as Changjiang Electric Power, Huaneng International, Shenneng, Guangkong and Yuedian have been quite successful, and the big rhythm of stock price performance is also quite consistent with Wei Yao's recommendation.
With these stories, Wei Yao himself has developed from the most junior researcher in this industry to the most advanced one. When he entered the business, he said that he knew nothing. Looking at many seniors, he felt that they were unattainable. In the past few years, with the changes in the securities industry and the continuous progress in seller research, Wei Yao has seized many opportunities. Probably in the third year of entering the industry, it achieved the first place in the industry and has remained so far.
Insist on industry change
Wei Yao's professional experience is also accompanied by the changes in the power industry he studied.
From the first day of starting a business until 2002, the power industry was in a state of recession. Through the continuous tracking and analysis of some conventional indicators in the industry, Wei Yao found that the indicators of the power industry and power generation companies are getting better gradually, so since 2003, he took the initiative to point out that the turning point of the power industry is approaching. Later, the power shortage that lasted for nearly two years verified this judgment, and the power industry also became one of the "five golden flowers" of the local bull market at that time, among which Huaneng, Changdian and SDIC performed quite well.
After 2004, the coal price soared, the cost pressure increased, and a large number of new units were put into production, which made the utilization rate of units decline, and the industry was once in turmoil, and even the whole industry lost money in the first quarter of 2005. However, through careful analysis and calculation of the core elements of the industry, Wei Yao pointed out that the low point of industry fluctuation is better than the general expectation, and the industry will pick up again after 2006. However, this view has been questioned. Even within a year after the profit rate of the industry increased again, a considerable number of people were overly pessimistic about the industry. In the second half of 2006, Wei Yao strongly recommended the power industry, pointing out that the performance of the stock price of the industry completely ignored the remarkable rebound of the industry's prosperity beyond expectations, and at the end of the year, he wrote a research report entitled "Prosperity Recovery and Asset Injection, Dancing with the Regional Strong", which comprehensively and predictably expounded a large number of investment opportunities in the industry, and was called the "programmatic" report of the power stock market in 2007. Coupled with a series of industry and company reports, in early 2007, power stocks also caught up with the bull market and walked out of the eye-catching market.
Therefore, Wei Yao believes that "the highest recommendation is of course important, and sometimes it needs reflection. If you find yourself right, you need more persistence. "
Wei Yao's research should not only cover the power industry itself, but also pay attention to coal and power equipment in the upstream and some high-energy industries in the downstream. This is a vertical axis, except for horizontal research. For each province and region, if the cost of supply and demand changes, we should not only consult enterprises, but also directly ask power plants. "Relatively speaking, the research of power listed companies is not decisive, but it can play a role in verification. In addition, you need to visit departments such as NDRC regularly. "
Different from other competitive industries, Wei Yao emphasized that the most difficult thing for the power industry is not to find outstanding enterprises through investigation and other means, but to grasp the big development trend from open information. For example, the analysis of the power industry in the past was based on the "origin theory". Later, in 2004, he gradually established three elements of analysis: electricity price, coal price and unit utilization rate. He observed the changes of the industry from these three indicators, predicted the changes of enterprise profits and the trend of industry prosperity, thus forming the basic analysis logic of the power industry. The "three elements" analysis once became the analysis method of future electric power industry researchers.
Wei Yao's experience is that the buyer's fund manager usually prefers rigorous logic to results. Old researchers have a logical advantage, and new researchers may think that a large amount of information is the most important. Relatively speaking, Wei Yao thinks that the information advantage of the seller's researcher is not obvious, and emphasizes rational analysis and diaosi.
For example, NDRC recently adjusted the electricity prices in Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia to those in Beijing, Tianjin and Tangshan. Wei Yao's review report did not calculate which company benefited greatly, but only pointed out the trend: although it is not coal-electricity linkage, it still has trend significance. The basis for adjusting the benchmark electricity price of Beijing-Tianjin-Tangshan Power Plant in the eastern provinces should still be "cost-driven", and the basis for relevant adjustment is not unrelated to the "regional coal-electricity linkage" strongly demanded by the two provinces in the middle of the year. Therefore, this electricity price adjustment should show that the overall trend of electricity price adjustment is relatively clear. The electricity price adjustment also follows the principle of optimal dispatch, with some new speculators raising their electricity prices and some inefficient units lowering their electricity prices at the same time. Therefore, although the relevant listed companies can't obviously benefit from this adjustment, the future electricity price adjustment (or the third coal-electricity linkage) may also adopt the practice of rising and falling, so that even if the overall electricity price is slightly raised, the advanced production capacity of the industry (including listed companies) can obviously benefit. This judgment on the trend comes from the combination of specialty and experience, and the trend of power stocks in the next two days once again confirms this judgment.
Investment bank's mind+investment vision
Wei Yao set three principles for his research team: objective analysis, prudent pricing and bold recommendation. First of all, an analysis company without subjective color should make a pricing forecast under the premise of caution, and then spare no effort to recommend it to customers.
Wei Yao often said: "Top researchers should have investment banking experience and investment vision, especially in industries with heavy assets, such as electricity and steel, and play the game of capital. Without the thinking of investment banks and analysis from the perspective of company executives and industry development, it is difficult to find and seize opportunities. "
His other principle is: to be an analyst, learn to be a man first, and maintain good communication and mutual trust with people in the industry and customers in various fields. A listed company once said: "Wei Yao is not optimistic about our company, but I still admit that he is the best analyst."
Wei Yao's research experience is that to predict the most reliable development trend, first, we should think from a higher angle, second, we should communicate with the best people in the industry, and third, we should give suggestions to the company's development from the professional perspective of the securities industry. He believes that you should imagine yourself as your investment bank manager. The basis of his communication with company executives is that he also knows the industry, and once helped him to consider it from the other side's point of view, not only because of his popularity and the investors behind him, but also because big industries have to grasp the general trend. Take the power company as an example, which is relatively homogeneous, and the gap between individual stocks will not be as big as that of other industries. All fund managers also prefer to ask him about the industry.
Wei Yao once became friends with the boss of a listed company, who worked in this industry all his life and was over sixty. He also established investment and financing arrangements and frameworks for many companies to enter the capital market. He often tells various power companies about industry development and company cases. At that time, he told some senior executives of central enterprises about the development concept of power listed companies: "Shares are the most important, cost is the priority, and cash is king." Looking back now, the development track of Huaneng and Changdian Company is generally like this.
"When your idea can be applied to listed companies, that is, after our virtual economy has affected the real economy, it will be very fulfilling." Wei Yao said.
It is proud that Wei Yao has seized almost all the investment opportunities in this industry, and most of the most typical companies, the most distinctive and unconventional companies in the industry were first discovered and recommended by him. Many fund managers say that Wei Yao can tell both facts and stories.
Wei Yao said that research is induction and deduction on the basis of rationality. An analyst can't be like a textbook, and it doesn't have to be related to bubbles. He should stick to his own ideas, but he can't exclude other different voices.
"Internationalization and standardization research process will sweep across domestic research in the future." Wei Yao said that old researchers may survive, while those who can't adapt may be eliminated. The market will eliminate some people, the work will eliminate some people, and some people will eliminate themselves. Now many researchers feel the same way as Wei Yao, and sometimes they think they are "brain farmers". At a certain stage, it can also be regarded as "eating a youthful meal", which is very exhausting and hard. However, analysts in Hong Kong can generally reach the age of 45. "The domestic research road will soon repeat the foreign road. There must be no more than 10 brokers who can afford strength research institutions in the future, and five are normal. Which old guys can survive? Which new ones can grab seats? It is a process worth thinking about. "
"I have always felt that this job is more suitable for me, and I haven't felt that I can't make progress. I still have passion, and I like this job better. In line with some of my ideals and personality, I have made great progress. Some personal research directions and ideas can be realized slowly. " These are the reasons why Wei Yao has not changed careers so far. He said that in recent years, there have been many opportunities to do other work, with top foreign investment banks to dig, and also have the opportunity to be the head of investment research in fund companies. But the research is not only an induction of historical situation, but also a prediction and deduction of the future. The core of research is to predict the future, but this is the most difficult. "Every year, there are new things, new problems, new achievements and new pains," Wei Yao said, adding that the industry is still very attractive. (
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