Since the third quarter, the A-share market has gone through a notable phase of volatility and structural rebalancing, and the main investment themes for the fourth quarter are now drawing widespread attention. Recently, several fund companies including Wanjia Fund, JPMorgan Asset Management, HSBC Jintrust Fund, Bosera Fund, and Guolian An Fund released their latest fourth-quarter investment strategies. Public fund institutions generally believe that the third-quarter market correction mainly stemmed from the digestion of crowded trading and capital rebalancing, rather than a reversal of core industry logic. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, the market is expected to fluctuate upward amid valuation repair and broadening market participation. In terms of allocation approach, institutions generally advocate adhering to hard-tech industry trends such as AI while adopting a more balanced allocation strategy, with overseas manufacturing, strategic resource commodities, and undervalued traditional recovery sectors becoming the key directions favored by major public fund institutions.

Overseas Rate Hike Lands, Risk Appetite Recovers

From a macroeconomic perspective, the clarity of overseas monetary policy节奏 and the recovery of global risk appetite have provided a relatively stable external environment for the fourth-quarter equity market. The macro team at Bosera Fund pointed out that the Federal Reserve's September FOMC meeting unanimously approved a 25bp rate hike and raised growth and inflation expectations, with the dot plot guiding two cumulative hikes this year and one more next year; the market initially priced in a hawkish stance but subsequently shifted to pricing the landing of the hike and the restoration of the Fed's credibility, long-end rates fell back, and global risk assets rebounded significantly. Min Liangchao, Director of Equity Research and Fund Manager at HSBC Jintrust Fund, similarly believes that U.S. Treasury yields are running ahead of policy, and the rate hike is essentially the landing of inflation and prior expectations; after the hike, the market saw the boundary of rates, and although U.S. Treasury yields may oscillate at a high level around 5% in the future, the "boots on the ground" means the moment of greatest pressure on assets has passed, and pricing logic will return more to fundamentals and valuations. Wanjia Fund further noted that under the paradigm shift of the "Warsh era," the Federal Reserve has weakened forward guidance and strengthened data dependence, and geopolitical disruptions temporarily pushed up oil prices and yield volatility; however, after the mid-September rate hike landed, U.S. Treasury yields flattened, the term premium fell back to pre-July FOMC levels, U.S. stocks hit new highs, and semiconductors rebounded, all indicating that the Fed's credibility has been restored. Focusing on domestic fundamentals, the economy is currently in deep water undergoing momentum transition and structural optimization. Ni Quansheng, Head of the Balanced and Value Group and Senior Fund Manager at JPMorgan Asset Management China, analyzed that the previous domestic investment model driven by debt leverage around real estate and infrastructure is changing, and manufacturing upgrading has become a new growth engine, which has increased the correlation between the domestic economy and external demand, and shifted investment logic from cyclical gaming to the enhancement of corporate global competitiveness and improvement of operational quality. Regarding the fourth-quarter A-share trend, public fund institutions overall maintain a volatile but optimistic judgment. Wanjia Fund believes that the market has fully priced in macroeconomic disruptions earlier, and the fourth quarter is expected to fluctuate and slowly rise on the basis of broadening and rotating market participation; however, amid differences over the U.S. midterm elections and the number of rate hikes, overseas disruptions should not be ignored. Bosera Fund also cautioned that in the process of subsequent market rebounds, there will be pressure from important diplomatic expectations and pre-holiday volume contraction; if volatility and adjustments occur, they would instead be better layout opportunities.

AI Industry Wave Logic Remains Intact

Reviewing the market fluctuations in the third quarter, the pullback in the technology sector represented by AI triggered discussions about style switching. Multiple fund managers unanimously believe that the previous volatility in the technology sector was not a peak in fundamentals, but rather the result of crowded positioning and rebalancing of trading structure. Min Liangchao stated that a major style switch typically requires both "major problems in the fundamentals of the original main line" and "extreme trading crowding," while the third-quarter adjustment was mainly due to excessive crowding in the technology sector in the first half; the AI industry trend has not fundamentally changed, and stock price volatility more reflects investors' concerns, with the market still in a phase of capital rebalancing rather than a fundamental style switch. Gao Shi, Fund Manager at Guolian An Fund, holds a similar view, analyzing that overseas markets fully recognize the prospects of the AI industry, the Nasdaq continues to hit new highs, and the short-term A-share adjustment is more of an emotional disturbance from insufficient incremental capital, long holiday factors, and high-level consolidation; the third-quarter adjustment did not damage the medium- to long-term growth logic of AI, but instead reinforced the foundation for subsequent market performance. Entering the fourth quarter, the pricing logic of the technology sector is undergoing a qualitative transformation—from early-stage concept speculation to full-scale fundamental earnings realization. Wanjia Fund pointed out that overseas AI pricing logic has shifted from competing on Capex upgrades to verifying demand and cash flow quality; companies that can quickly convert computing power investment into high-growth revenue and cash flow through cloud businesses enjoy premiums, while those that only upgrade capital expenditure without closing the profit loop are discounted. This is not the end of the AI main line, but rather marks the industry entering a mature stage of "Beta to Alpha, narrative to reality, speed to quality." In terms of exploring specific sub-sectors of the industry chain, fund managers are highly focused on earnings certainty and global competitive barriers. Gao Shi prioritizes two dimensions: first, optical communications and PCBs in the overseas supply chain direction, where domestic manufacturers have prominent advantages in pricing power and technological iteration, and the sector's valuation is currently at the bottom, awaiting repair after switching to next year's valuation; second, domestic semiconductor equipment and storage, where domestic computing power expansion will continue to drive equipment orders, and the storage sector benefits from supply-demand improvement. Regarding the application end, which has recently gained high attention, Gao Shi believes that A-share targets are scarce and business models are still being explored, so the current stage is mainly observation, and investment certainty remains concentrated in the hardware computing power chain. JPMorgan Asset Management's Ni Quansheng also emphasizes that technology investment should closely focus on leading companies with realizable earnings; the industry chain transmission has spread from large models to optical modules, PCBs, copper-clad laminates, and further to supporting links such as power supplies and liquid cooling for heat dissipation, and cost-effective targets should be sought through dynamic assessment. The macro team at Bosera Fund also noted that the valuation of the technology growth sector has declined from previous highs, and in October it is necessary to closely track overseas earnings season performance and the repair of micro-level capital conditions in the sector.

Firmly Grasp Opportunities in Overseas Manufacturing, Strategic Resource Commodities, and More

However, in the face of the complex macroeconomic and geopolitical landscape in the fourth quarter, a single-track strategy is no longer sufficient to cope with market volatility. Public fund institutions generally advocate a balanced allocation of "offense and defense," focusing on overseas manufacturing, strategic resource commodities, and traditional undervalued sectors with room for recovery. In the field of manufacturing going global, high-quality industrial products with global competitiveness have become a consensus. Ni Quansheng focused on analyzing two major directions: construction machinery and power equipment. He pointed out that the recent adjustment in construction machinery is more of an emotional overshoot, the industry fundamentals are generally stable, and low North American exposure means less impact from external trade policies; in the medium to long term, the global reindustrialization wave and the industrialization process of developing countries will bring smooth and sustained demand for capital goods, and shipbuilding, offshore engineering equipment, and AI upstream equipment are also in a high-prosperity cycle. For power equipment, Ni Quansheng divides investment into two stages: traditional grid going global and "computing power is electricity," currently focusing on power generation and transmission and transformation equipment with well-established overseas layouts and strong order certainty. Min Liangchao also explicitly lists cyclical and manufacturing (export-oriented companies) as core focus directions for the fourth quarter, favoring their marginal improvement in fundamentals. Strategic resource commodities and heavy-asset industries (HALO assets) have been given entirely new strategic pricing. Wanjia Fund particularly emphasizes that as overseas monetary system gaming intensifies and geopolitical conflicts normalize the risk premium in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, strategic resource commodities are transforming from an "economic thermometer" into "the hardest currency in the era of great power gaming," and it is recommended to focus on strategic varieties such as non-ferrous metals and coal. Ni Quansheng further argues from the perspective of supply constraints that for non-ferrous metals represented by copper, capacity increments are extremely low while the demand side benefits simultaneously from reindustrialization and AI computing power construction; oil and petrochemicals and other HALO assets are clearly constrained by capital and environmental regulations, and with global refining capacity contraction and low inventory levels, mid- and downstream restocking is expected to bring high earnings elasticity. As for dividend assets that have recently gained attention, Min Liangchao cautioned that dividend assets will in the future lean more toward individual stock opportunities rather than sector-wide opportunities, with the core depending on whether the dividend yield is sufficiently high and the relative strength of opportunities in other growth sectors; Bosera Fund also pointed out that from the perspective of the dividend-technology return spread, short-term dividend valuations have already recovered, and the market outlook will test stock selection success rates even more.