Zhongtai Securities(SH:600918) ZHONGTAI SECURITIES·2025-08-05 05:46Report Industry Investment Rating - The report does not explicitly mention the industry investment rating. Core Viewpoints - The extreme divergence between credit spreads and stock risk premiums led to the starting point of the current A-share valuation expansion. The current round of A-share market is driven by funds, and the logic has only reached the middle stage, with the upward trend unfinished [2]. - The fact that the risk premium has reached "mean - 1 standard deviation" does not mean the end of the market. Considering the intensity and duration of the current round of fund - driven, A - share valuations are expected to continue to expand, driving the risk premium to decline further, and the risk - compensation returns of stocks and bonds will eventually converge [2][5]. Summary by Directory 1. Historically, the stock market risk premium can stay below "mean - 1 standard deviation" for a long time - There were several historical periods when the stock market risk premium fell below "mean - 1 standard deviation", such as from December 2014 to August 2015, November 2017 to February 2018, and September 2020 to April 2021, with durations of 9 months, 2 months, and 8 months respectively. Except for the 2017 - 2018 period when the risk premium could not continue to decline due to rapid liquidity withdrawal, in other periods, it could fall to around "mean - 2 standard deviations" or even lower [3]. - These historical periods had similar macro - environments that did not support a bull market in stocks. The factors driving the significant expansion of A - share valuations were not fundamental but fund - driven, and there was no continuous expansion of corporate profits [3]. 2. In the current round of the market, the indexes have expanded to varying degrees, and there are no signs of an end - Since the beginning of the year, the stock market has priced in the decline of the risk - free rate. Different sectors have different repair progress. The repair of large - cap stocks is relatively large, with the ERP basically reaching "mean - 1 standard deviation", while the ERP of small - and medium - cap stocks is still above the historical mean [4]. - The current round of valuation expansion also starts from changes in the capital side. Since September 2024, the economic fundamentals and corporate profit growth have been weak, and the monetary policy has been relatively loose. The core factor determining the start and end of the market is the sustainability of fund - driving. The current round of fund - driven logic has only evolved to institutional - driven and allocation - driven (insurance funds taking the lead), and bank wealth management and public funds will take over in the second half of the year [4]. - With the expansion of A - share valuations, the risk premium of the Shanghai Composite Index has been below "mean - 1 standard deviation" since July 18, lasting for less than 1 month. "Mean - 1 standard deviation" cannot be a sign of the end of the market, especially since the risk premiums of some sectors are still above the mean [4]. 3. Valuation expansion space calculation under two scenario assumptions - Historically, the extreme situation of index valuation expansion is in the range of "mean - N standard deviations", where N is between 0.6 - 4.0, with a median of approximately 2.0. - Scenario 1 assumes that the stock market risk premium can fall to "mean - 2 standard deviations"; Scenario 2 assumes that it can fall to "mean - N standard deviations", where N corresponds to the lowest level previously reached by the index's ERP. - Based on these two assumptions, the ChiNext Index has the largest PE expansion space, followed by the Wind 300 (ex - banks), CSI 1000, and CSI 500. The PE expansion spaces of the SSE 50, Shanghai Composite Index, and Wind Dividend Index are relatively small, but there is still expansion space even in a conservative scenario [6][7].