"Light" erupts! Public fund performance in 100 days showcased, with track battles experiencing "ice and fire" extremes

The 2026 market outlook is about to enter its 100-day milestone, and performance differentiation across public funds is set to intensify further.

As of the latest data, the difference between the top and bottom fund returns across the entire market for the year to date has already exceeded 92%. Among them, funds focused on optical communications have been leading strongly, while products heavily invested in Hong Kong stock internet and humanoid robot themes continue to lag at the bottom. Track investing can truly be described as a mix of ice and fire.

“Optical” theme funds’ performance continues to surge

Recently, volatility in the A-share market has intensified, but the optical communications sector has strengthened against the trend, becoming a core track driving multiple funds’ net asset values higher. Products with heavy allocations to this sector have seen a concentrated surge in performance, and their net asset values have repeatedly hit historical highs.

At the fund level, it is not difficult to see that this year, funds with the strongest performance gains in the industry—such as Guoshou Anbao Digital Economy, Jinxin Quantitative Selection, Guoshou Anbao Strategy Selection, and Huatai-PineBridge Quality Growth—have all, without exception, heavily allocated to optical communications concept companies. The year-to-date performance gains of these active equity funds have all exceeded 30%.

On the board, recently, heat has concentrated and erupted in sub-sectors such as OCS (optical circuit switching), CPO (co-packaged optics), and more granular optical fiber tracks, and individual stocks have performed impressively. On April 3, Decko Tech hit a 20% daily limit up. Tengjing Technology rose 19.22% at the close. Core names such as GOKU Technology and NeoPhotonics also moved higher in tandem. Within the CPO track, Luobotoke and Yuanzjie Technology also rose in sync. Optical fiber concept stocks such as Feitfibers have repeatedly set historical highs.

Feitfibers’ stock price has risen more than 2 times year to date; Decko Tech’s stock price has risen more than 79% year to date; Tengjing Technology’s stock price is approaching a doubling year to date. Luobotoke, Yuanzjie Technology, and others have also posted solid performance year to date, carving out an independent trend in the A-share market.

Stock performance in the secondary market is inseparable from support from industry prosperity cycles. As global technology giants accelerate their AI computing power cluster deployments, market demand for core foundational components such as optical modules and optical fiber and cable continues to expand.

The uptrend in prices on the upstream raw materials end is clear. Data show that in March 2026, the domestic G652.D bare optical fiber spot price rose 165% month-on-month from January, with a year-on-year increase as high as 418%, and the price-increase cycle continues to deepen.

The industry policy side has also received strong support. On April 2, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued the “Notice on Carrying Out a Special Action to Empower the Development of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises with Inclusive Computing Power,” stating that it will promote the deployment of technical applications such as OCS to reduce network latency from computing-power application terminals to servers.

Many institutions believe that, from a medium- to long-term perspective, the growth momentum of the communications equipment industry chain remains solid. With the current AI computing power demand surge still in its early stage, and the continued advancement of global large data center construction, it will provide long-term support for the upward move in the prosperity of upstream core components such as optical fibers and optical modules. As Tianfeng Securities pointed out, it firmly expects the sustainability of Optical Interconnection’s performance (optical chips, optical devices, optical modules, optical equipment, optical switching, optical fiber and cable). On the one hand, the joint scaling and rapid growth of 800G and 1.6T optical modules drive high expansion; on the other hand, a bloom of new technologies for Optical Interconnection is emerging (CPO, NPO, XPO, 3.2T, OCS, OIO, etc.). Optical Interconnection will continue to penetrate more deeply into the computing-power interconnect layer, benefiting the industry chain as a whole and opening up a larger growth space over the next several years.

The performance gap between the top and bottom public funds for the year to date exceeds 92%

Q1 2026 has already passed. At the beginning of Q2, the market situation is not optimistic, and performance differentiation among public funds has intensified further. Overall, the difference between the top and bottom performance of funds across the entire market for the year to date has already exceeded 92%.

Affected by factors such as geopolitical conflicts in the Middle East, crude oil prices have continued to surge, leading commodities higher. QDII funds and commodity funds investing in oil-and-gas-related assets have delivered more substantial returns.

Among QDII funds, the year-to-date returns of Southern Oil, E Fund Oil, and Harvest Oil are 64.91%, 59.71%, and 58.08%, respectively, making them the leading funds by year-to-date performance at present. These three funds are all mainly focused on overseas crude-oil–themed funds.

From the beginning of the year to date, there has been substantial volatility in the A-share market. In terms of indices, the SSE Composite Index has cumulatively fallen 2.24%, the CSI 300 Index has cumulatively declined 4.09%, and the ChiNext Index has cumulatively dropped 1.67%.

Guangfa Yuanzhan Intelligent Selection, as an active equity fund, has recorded a year-to-date performance gain of more than 60.29%.

In addition, among active equity funds, Guoshou Anbao Digital Economy, Jinxin Quantitative Selection, Ping An Asset Management Digital Economy, Guoshou Anbao Strategy Selection, Huashang Zhiyuan Return, Huatai-PineBridge Quality Growth, Ping An Technology Selection, and others have all posted year-to-date gains of more than 30%.

It is not difficult to see that “optical” theme funds and crude-oil theme funds together occupy the top ranks on the performance leaderboard.

Meanwhile, with volatility in the A-share market this year, more than half of active equity funds have had performance that is “negative” year to date. According to Wind data, the year-to-date return of the equity-focused hybrid fund index is 0.24%.

Looking at the performance of individual funds specifically, the performance differentiation is clear. The worst net asset value decline among individual funds exceeds 27%. In total, 38 funds have recorded year-to-date declines of more than 20%, including Hong Kong stock internet theme funds, humanoid robot theme funds, aviation theme funds, and more.

Fund managers are optimistic about localized structural opportunities

Since the beginning of the year, although the equity market has not performed well and has seen significant volatility, there are still many fund managers who are optimistic about localized structural opportunities. They also remain firmly convinced that what determines the central axis of stock valuation is still companies’ own earnings capacity.

Agricultural Bingli, a fund manager in the stock investment department at Invesco Great Wall, believes that overseas geopolitical conflicts have temporarily raised market volatility and also created some disruption to risk appetite. He argues that in the short term, such factors affect market timing and valuation fluctuations more, but in the medium to long term, it is still companies’ own earnings capacity that determines the central axis of stock valuation. In the AI industry, in 2026, Agentic AI has entered an accelerated development stage. Especially in coding, improvements in model capability and monetization are forming a positive feedback loop. Overseas CSPs’ demand for computing power resources continues to strengthen, and high-value inference scenarios further increase the importance of network efficiency, system architecture, and hardware coordination. With hardware optimization and technical upgrades around the inference layer, it is expected to become an important main line for the next stage of AI infrastructure. He continues to look favorably at directions such as optical interconnection and heterogeneous computing, and their ability to deliver results and growth potential.

Liu Jiang, a fund manager at Great Wall Fund, does not hide his long-term optimism toward the AI industry. He believes the AI industry is currently in an early to mid stage and is a growth direction with the potential for sustained value extraction. However, he is not broadly laying out “AI concepts”; instead, he deeply explores parts of the industry chain with high certainty, early benefits, and clear barriers—the “shovel sellers” of the AI industry, namely fields related to computing power infrastructure. He believes that, as the “shovel-selling” layer in the AI industry, the computing power chain is expected to continue to benefit from demand growth brought by industry development.

Within the sub-directions of the computing power chain, Liu Jiang focuses on the optical communications sector. His reasoning is not only that computing power demand is growing, but more importantly that optical communications technology itself is undergoing important changes. He points out that from the perspective of the industry’s underlying logic, optical communications, as a key link in the AI computing power supply chain, has a long-term penetration rate trending upward. The development of emerging solutions such as OCS and CPO promoted by overseas technology giants also fully demonstrates the importance of optical interconnection, driving optical interconnection’s value volume to continue rising.

It is worth noting that in investing, most fund managers choose to follow the trend—moving with the market’s mainstream in the direction where the trend is most certain. But a small number of fund managers choose to take a contrarian approach and position on the left side.

Chen Jinwei, a fund manager at Penghua Fund who dares to take a contrarian approach, is most optimistic about the midstream cyclical cycle (represented by chemicals) and consumption healthcare with domestic-demand attributes. Chen Jinwei is optimistic about the midstream cyclical sector that benefits from “anti-overcrowding,” and has significantly increased holdings in midstream industries represented by chemicals since early in Q3 2025. These directions showed some performance in the second half of 2025, but in his view there is still a large expectation gap today. Taking chemicals as an example, there is an expectation gap in the market. The consumption and medical healthcare sectors have been the worst-performing sectors over the past five years, but since 2025 Chen Jinwei has been looking at domestic-demand structural opportunities. He still believes it may be the sector with the largest room and the biggest expectation gap over the next five years. He judges that the current market is one-sided in not pricing in consumption, with an obvious irrational component, and that the inflection point may be right ahead.

（Source: China Securities Journal）