Hong Kong Analyst Dances His Way to Votes in Investor Poll
Dennis Ip insists his dancing was just meant to draw attention to his recommendations.
(Bloomberg) -- Dennis Ip knows no matter how good his stock calls are, it’s hard to stand out among a sea of analysts. So he turned to K-pop.
A video of Ip, a power sector analyst at Daiwa Capital Markets Hong Kong Ltd., dancing to a song by the South Korean boy band Big Bang went viral among the city’s finance industry workers on Friday.
Wearing a suit in a park, the bespectacled Ip claps his hands, rolls his shoulders and stomps his feet, all with a poker face and minimal special effects. The roughly one-minute clip -- which was posted on Chinese streaming site Youku.com -- ends with a clear message: Ip will post the full version if he has 150 votes in the annual Institutional Investor survey.
“I want to draw attention first, before then talking about my stock recommendations,” Ip said in a phone interview Friday. “When everyone sends the same thing, you may not get any attention.”
The response has exceeded Ip’s expectations. The video had more than 6,600 views as of Monday. On Friday, views of his biography on the Bloomberg terminal exceeded those of U.S. President Donald Trump’s at one point. Ip said some fund managers have reached out to him because of the video -- but mostly to discuss power stocks.
Ip practiced the routine to the electronic dance song “Bang Bang Bang” after work for about two to three weeks, he said. Ip then asked his wife to film him and posted the video to his friends on the Chinese messaging platform WeChat.
Attention Seeker
The analyst insists his dancing was just meant to draw attention to his recommendations. The average return on his 22 stock calls over the past year was 21 percent, exceeding the 14 percent average of his peers, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
For the new year, he recommends power and utilities stocks that can withstand inflation, such as Towngas China Co., Guangdong Investment Ltd. and CK Infrastructure Holdings Ltd. Ip downgraded the rating of China Gas Holdings Ltd. to outperform from buy last week.
“My calls every year have been successful, but ultimately I think the feedback is not that long-lasting,” he said. “I want clients to focus on my research.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Justina Lee in Hong Kong at jlee1489@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Richard Frost at rfrost4@bloomberg.net, Fion Li, Emma O'Brien
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