Rayliant Investment Research

Rayliant operates a mainland China-registered private fund manager (PFM) license through its Shanghai subsidiary. This allows the firm to trade A-shares directly on local exchanges, bypassing reliance on Stock Connect or P-note structures. The PFM status also gives Rayliant access to local brokerage relationships, corporate-access data, and regulatory filings that offshore-only managers typically cannot obtain.

Founder and CIO Jason Hsu oversees all investment strategies. Before Rayliant, Hsu co-founded Research Affiliates and served as its CIO, where he helped develop the firm's fundamental-index and smart-beta methodologies that now underpin over $150 billion in assets. His academic work on behavioral finance and factor investing informs the firm's quantitative approach.

The Rayliant Quantamental China Equity ETF (ticker: RAYC) is the firm's primary US-listed product. Rayliant serves as sub-advisor, selecting the portfolio, while Exchange Traded Concepts acts as the fund's sponsor and advisor of record. The ETF applies systematic factor screens to a universe of China equities, targeting value, quality, and momentum exposures calibrated for local-market conditions.

Yes. Rayliant manages dedicated institutional mandates for both US and non-US clients, including UCITS-compliant vehicles distributed in Europe. The firm runs China-focused and broader emerging-markets strategies through separately managed accounts, providing customization around tracking-error budgets and factor tilts that the off-the-shelf ETF does not offer.

Rayliant explicitly accounts for China-specific market distortions in its factor models — high retail-trading volume, state-ownership effects, policy-cycle sensitivity, and segmented share classes — rather than applying globally standard factor definitions. The firm's Shanghai-based research team sources local-language datasets on broker-margin flows and domestic fund allocations that inform dynamic factor-weighting decisions.

Rayliant remains privately held by its founder Jason Hsu and senior partners, with no external private-equity backing or parent asset-manager ownership. This structure avoids the distribution-driven product-launch pressure common at bank-owned EM managers, letting the firm concentrate on research-led strategy design and a deliberately narrow product set.

The Santa Monica headquarters houses portfolio management, research leadership, and US institutional distribution. The Shanghai office operates the PFM entity, handles onshore trading and local data sourcing, and maintains broker relationships. The Hong Kong office supports offshore fund vehicles and Asia-Pacific client coverage.