At the 2026 Global and China Capital Market Outlook Forum held on January 15th, Fu Jingtao, Chief A-Share Strategist at Shenwan Hongyuan Securities, delivered a keynote speech titled "The Two-Stage Bull Market Theory."

Fu Jingtao pointed out that the market currently harbors doubts regarding the certainty of macroeconomic improvement and the clear drivers for the next phase of China's economic growth, with most maintaining a cautious stance on whether these factors can provide substantial elastic support for the economy. However, from the perspective of strategic research and market analysis, two significant certain trends are emerging.

First, the improvement in listed companies' earnings is actually more certain than the improvement in the aggregate economy. Second, the core logic driving the development of advanced manufacturing lies in the fact that supply clearing in the midstream manufacturing sector has reached a historically high level. Despite continuous market discussions over the past five years about "involution" and "anti-involution," by 2026, the midstream manufacturing industry is expected to be the first to emerge from the deflationary cycle. Against this backdrop, the certainty of marginal improvements at the listed company level within the midstream manufacturing sector is far higher than that in upstream cyclical industries.

Fu Jingtao further stated that, from the perspective of cyclical investment and marginal improvement, the investment extension centered on midstream manufacturing will also have higher certainty than the diffusion effects of traditional cyclical commodities like steel and coal. Translating this into specific forecast data, he proposed a noteworthy judgment: in 2026, the A-share market is expected to witness two "firsts" in nearly five years—one is that the overall profitability of A-shares may experience an effective marginal upturn; the other is that the A-share market might achieve double-digit positive growth.

"Five years is enough time for an analyst to progress from entry-level to chief analyst, and also sufficient for some excellent buy-side researchers to advance to portfolio manager positions. However, during these five years, we have never experienced double-digit positive growth," Fu Jingtao noted. Therefore, from the perspective of fundamental cyclical improvement, investors in 2026 can expect a significant expansion and enhancement in the scope of opportunities, the number of potential targets, and the probability of investment success when conducting opportunity mining and bottom-up stock selection.