About Me
I quit institutional finance after 25 years, moved to Hong Kong, and now invest my own capital globally with a deep focus on China. No salary. No safety net. The capital I invest is the capital I live on — and I publish every investment thesis, every position, and every mistake along the way — starting with why I named it Cohong Lane.
My Story
I placed my first trade in 1999 with a $1,500 paycheck. Twenty-five years followed — KPMG in Copenhagen, SAS Institute across Asia Pacific, PwC in Hong Kong, and finally CFO of a global family office where I sat next to the capital allocation decisions that shape how institutional money actually moves.
In 2024, I walked away. Not to “follow my passion”. To make a capital allocation decision: deploy what I know, with my own money, from the one place where the biggest gap between narrative and reality is wide enough to be investable.
I relocated to Hong Kong in 2025. I cross into mainland China one to two times a week, do the work on the ground, and publish everything I learn.
What Subscribers Get
Portfolio & Process — How I structure and manage my own portfolio, with real decisions and real money. Every position, every sizing choice, every mistake. You can watch each thesis play out in real time.
Investor’s Mindset — The psychology, frameworks, and mental models behind investing independently. How I think about risk, conviction, drawdowns, and biases. The reality of becoming the allocator of your own capital.
China Mechanics — Tracing policy mandates and money flows to turn government targets into investable themes — verified on the ground through dealership visits, city walks, and the kind of checks you can only do from Hong Kong.
If you manage your own money — or you’re building towards it — and you’d rather see how an independent investor actually operates than be told what to buy, you’re in the right place.
Why China, from Hong Kong
The gap between what Western mainstream media reports about China and what is actually happening on the ground can, at times, be wide enough to be investable. The only way to close that gap is to be here.
Walking through a BYD dealership in Shenzhen doesn’t give me statistically significant data. It gives me calibration — a way to pressure-test the narratives that land on my desk every morning. When a macro report says one thing and a Shenzhen mall on a Saturday says another, I don’t ignore either. I ask why they disagree. That question, more often than not, is where the investable insight lives.
How I Think
I don’t predict. I think in distributions — ranges of outcomes — and ask whether the current price compensates for the uncertainty. When I look at a Chinese EV company, I don’t ask “will it win?” I ask what the range of outcomes looks like, what probability I’d assign to each, and whether the current price is paying me for the uncertainty in between. If the downside is already priced in and the structural upside isn’t, that’s worth my time.
I hold my views probabilistically rather than with the false confidence that makes for better headlines. When I’m wrong, I want to understand why the range shifted, not pretend I never held the position.
What I Won’t Do
I won’t give you stock tips
I won’t chase the news cycle — I publish when I have a view, not because something happened
I won’t dumb China down to a single story, bullish or bearish
I won’t pretend to have certainty I don’t possess
Start Here
The best way to understand Cohong Lane is to see the operating system in action. In No Pain to Begin With, I walk through how my portfolio is actually structured — two core buckets, a fair value compass, and why a 40% drawdown changes my mood, not my decisions. Start there, then subscribe for one deep dispatch every Saturday — no tips, no hype, no news chasing. Just the real process, with real money on the line.
