For stock investors, authoritative, professional, timely, and comprehensive analyst reports help uncover potential thematic opportunities. Actually, it is quite a pity. This year the market has truly been too unkind to consumer fund managers.

But for a fund manager, the net asset value curve is his only resume, and also the most honest autobiography he leaves to the market. Every rise and fall records what he was thinking, doing, and deciding at the time: when to load up heavily, when to trim positions, when to hold steady, and when to cut losses and exit — all of it will eventually be etched into that curve stroke by stroke. Every drawdown is even more a testament to his values, character, and ability — whether he is responsible to unitholders, whether he reveres the market, whether he can maintain discipline in the face of temptation. What is placed on a desk and what fine words are spoken are just noise; what is written on the NAV curve is his true self, and it will remain preserved throughout his future public fund career.

On October 9, 2026, Penghua Fund issued an unremarkable fund manager change announcement: Penghua Youxuan Huibao Flexible Allocation Mixed Fund (006526) dismissed fund manager Xie Tianyuan, with Huang Yibin taking over, and the reason for departure cited as "personal reasons." The announcement was calm, and the industry was calm. More than a year ago, that young man who went viral across the internet — and even caught the attention of Bloomberg — for having his desk covered in Labubu figures and heavily betting on Pop Mart, quietly exited the stage.

How famous he once was

Rewind to the summer of 2025. At that time, Pop Mart International Group Limited was at a peak of market sentiment, and a photo of a young fund manager's desk circulated on social platforms — the desk, shelves, and cabinets were filled with Labubu and various trendy toys. Combined with his portfolio heavily weighted in Pop Mart, a persona of "the person who understands young people best" was instantly established. The topic shot to the top of trending searches, reports poured in continuously, and even Bloomberg paid attention. Xie Tianyuan became one of the few public fund managers that year to "break out" of the industry.

After going viral, where did the NAV go

Xie Tianyuan took office on February 6, 2024, and departed on October 9, 2026, with a tenure of approximately 2 years and 8 months. Public data shows that during his tenure managing Penghua Youxuan Huibao Flexible Allocation Mixed Fund A, the return was approximately 10.02%, while the average return of similar funds during the same period was as high as 54.09%, with an industry ranking of 6,204 out of 7,404 — placing in the bottom 16% of similar products, underperforming the benchmark by approximately 30 percentage points. The interim report data revealed an even more painful detail: among unitholders who bought in after he went viral, nearly 70% were in a loss position. In fact, Penghua also had some fund managers this year who were simply unlucky, and the pressure on them was also immense.

Fund managers should not be turned into entertainment, let alone celebrities

Coming back to that desk covered in Labubu. There is nothing wrong with it in itself — a young person liking trendy toys is perfectly understandable. The problem arises when "trendy toys," "persona," and "going viral" start to replace "research capability," "risk control level," and "long-term performance" as the main channels through which the public comes to know a fund manager — that is when the evaluation system goes wrong. The fundamental nature of the fund manager profession should be dull: reading financial reports, doing site visits, calculating valuations, and controlling drawdowns. It is a craft that requires enduring long periods of loneliness, not a variety show that constantly needs to generate talking points. When a person is chosen by traffic, he faces dual pressure: maintaining his persona on one hand, and delivering performance on the other. But the market never goes easy on you just because your desk is cute. When you underperform the benchmark by 30 percentage points, no amount of Labubu can fill the hole in your NAV.

Entertainment-ification hurts unitholders first. A persona attracts "fans," and fans buy based on emotion rather than valuation. When the persona and performance diverge, the first to get hurt are those brought in by the traffic. Nearly 70% of unitholders in loss is the best illustration of this.

Celebrity-ification then hurts the fund company. Over-reliance on a single star fund manager looks like a brand in the short term, but is a hidden risk in the long term. This is also why regulators are pushing "de-celebrity-ification," and why leading institutions are accelerating the building of platform-based investment research systems.

And ultimately, celebrity-ification will backfire on the fund manager himself. Those pushed onto a pedestal often have to bear the full weight of being on that pedestal. Traffic comes quickly and leaves just as quickly. So sometimes exposure to star fund managers should be reduced, to protect these fund managers. After all, the noise will eventually fade, and NAV is the only final answer.

That desk covered in Labubu once illuminated one person's brightest moment, and also exposed the浮躁 of an entire industry. Now the person is gone, the desk is empty, but the question remains: by what standard should we come to know a fund manager? The answer has actually never changed — look at performance, look at the long term, look at whether he is responsible to unitholders. This is also why after Jiang Xiaoli returned to the public fund industry, many fans left comments expressing their happiness — it is because she is very reliable.

Sometimes giving a fund manager too much exposure is itself a form of harm. Speaking of this, one cannot help but admire E Fund's Zhang Kun, who steadily focuses on investing, even though the pressure in recent years has also been considerable.