Will StashAway ever include A-shares China to take advantage of the Chinese market?

Hi there,

Thank you for sharing that consideration with us!
With the addition of more asset classes and the re-optimisation we did, we've actually moved most of our allocations away from the region and all of these changes have a medium-term forward-looking objective.

In contrast to the resilience we have seen in the US, the global economy faces a higher level of uncertainty. Looking at China specifically, which has the largest allocation in AAXJ (one of the ETFs in our list of funds), the Li Keqiang Index has shown that a cyclical slowdown has already begun since February 2017 when the index peaked at 12.85% YoY. By June 2019, the Li Keqiang Index has declined to 6.85% YoY. Remarkably, this cyclical slowdown in the Chinese economy has started roughly a year before the US-China trade war broke out. Hence, with the recent re-optimisation we've removed allocations to AAXJ.
If economic conditions change going forward, we will definitely see if it makes sense to re-allocate to the AAXJ asset class and do so. As mentioned, it is still in our list of funds universe :)

If any of their ETFs tracks the MSCI China Index, then the said ETF would already have exposure to A-shares. And MSCI is in the midst of increasing the A-share allocation in the MSCI China Index from 5% to 20% progressively in three phases.
I believe the inclusion of the A-share is impacting all MSCI benchmarks that already have a China component. However, with the exception MSCI China Index, I am not too sure what is the impact of the inclusion of A-shares has on other MSCI benchmarks. MSCI China Index is sort of the flagship benchmark from MSCI. Hence, I am slightly more familiar with this benchmark.
On a side note, I am starting a financial blog. Do check it out.

http://investment-blueprint.com