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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Morgan-Stanley-says-China-is-‘overinvested-but-Indias-the-opposite-820x462.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-427230" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Morgan-Stanley-says-China-is-‘overinvested-but-Indias-the-opposite-820x462.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Morgan-Stanley-says-China-is-‘overinvested-but-Indias-the-opposite-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Morgan-Stanley-says-China-is-‘overinvested-but-Indias-the-opposite-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Morgan-Stanley-says-China-is-‘overinvested-but-Indias-the-opposite-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Morgan-Stanley-says-China-is-‘overinvested-but-Indias-the-opposite.jpg 929w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The Central television transmission tower among urban buildings in Beijing, China, June 12, 2023. CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images</figcaption></figure>



China is overinvested as its economy continues to get buffeted — but India has room for investment opportunities, said Morgan Stanley.



“China is overinvested. It’s overleveraged and it’s oversupplied. And then it has this geopolitical cloud over it,” said Jitania Kandhari, Morgan Stanley’s deputy CIO for solutions &amp; multi-asset and managing director.



This is in contrast to India, which Kandhari says is underinvested.



“It’s underinvested because investment to GDP was down, and now investment and manufacturing are hopefully picking up with the China-plus-one diversion of trade that is happening there,” Kandhari told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia.”



Recently companies have pursued a “China-plus-one” strategy as they diversify their supply chains in a bid for resilience.



<figure class="wp-block-pullquote has-text-align-left"><blockquote>India story definitely feels like it has legs.<cite>Jitania Kandhari DEPUTY CIO AT MORGAN STANLEY</cite></blockquote></figure>



Kandhari added that India is undersupplied in terms of homes and property, whereas “China has so many excesses.”



China’s real estate sector has been mired in debt and plagued by weak sales. New home sales for the top 100 developers sunk by about a third in June and July from a year ago, after double-digit growth earlier in the year, according to S&amp;P Global Ratings.



“India’s beginning a new cycle on the real estate side — made in India, work from India — with the global centers setting up there,” she elaborated.



“So India story definitely feels like it has legs.”



That being said, Kandhari feels that some pockets of China are still investable, hinging on the improvement of the country’s economic growth.



Kandhari said a key factor that investors need to take into account is that the risk premium in both public and private Chinese assets have gone up given geopolitical issues, as well as the country’s nominal growth which has “collapsed.”



China has been battered by a slew of disappointing economic figures, with the latest&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/15/china-economy-july-industrial-output-fixed-asset-retail-data.html">economic data broadly missing expectations</a>.



“You really need the nominal side of the economy to pick up, and that will be only in areas where there is pricing power, or areas where you would see growth,” Kandhari said, citing examples in green technology and semiconductors.



But these will only be in small pockets, she reaffirmed. Additionally, capitulation in China has only happened at the sentiment level, but not at the flows level where it’s looking “like a screaming buy,” she surmised. Capitulation generally means a point at which investors sell their assets out of fear.



“So I think it will take a while for even any upside, and [for] some of the select pockets that [will] look encouraging to us.”

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The District of Columbia Court of Appeals has paved the way for bitcoin exchange-traded funds.



On Tuesday, the court sided with Grayscale in a lawsuit against the Securities and Exchange Commission which had denied the company’s application to convert the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/GBTC/">Grayscale Bitcoin Trust</a>&nbsp;to an ETF. The decision could impact other companies that want to create bitcoin ETFs, like&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/BLK/">BlackRock</a>&nbsp;and Fidelity.



A spot bitcoin ETF would be traded through a traditional stock exchange, although the bitcoin would be held by a brokerage, and would allow investors to gain exposure to the world’s biggest cryptocurrency&nbsp;without having to own the coin themselves. Many crypto bulls believe that approval of a spot bitcoin ETF will lead to more mainstream institutional adoption.



<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/BTC.CB=/">Bitcoin</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/ETH.CM=/">ether</a>, and other major cap crypto coins surged on the news, and&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/quotes/COIN/">Coinbase</a>, which is listed as the custodian partner in multiple spot bitcoin ETF applications, was up more than 14% on Tuesday.



“The Commission failed to adequately explain why it approved the listing of two bitcoin futures ETPs but not Grayscale’s proposed bitcoin ETP,” the court said, referring to exchange-traded products. “In the absence of a coherent explanation, this unlike regulatory treatment of like products is unlawful.”



Grayscale Investments, which manages the world’s biggest crypto fund,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/30/grayscale-sues-sec-after-rejected-bid-to-turn-bitcoin-fund-into-etf.html">initiated its lawsuit against the SEC in June</a>&nbsp;2022 after the agency rejected its application to turn its flagship bitcoin fund, better known by its ticker GBTC, into an ETF. The company decided to pursue the ETF, which would be backed by bitcoin rather than bitcoin derivatives, after the SEC&nbsp;<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/first-bitcoin-futures-etf-to-make-its-debut-on-the-nyse-tuesday-proshares-says.html">approved ProShares’ futures-based bitcoin ETF in October 2021</a>.



The ruling faced multiple delays but the SEC ultimately rejected the application last summer, citing failure by Grayscale to answer questions related to concerns about market manipulation and investor protections.



“We are reviewing the court’s decision to determine next steps,” the SEC said in a statement.



A spokeswoman for Grayscale called Tuesday’s ruling “a monumental step forward for American investors, the Bitcoin ecosystem, and all those who have been advocating for Bitcoin exposure through the added protections of the ETF wrapper.”



U.S. court rules in favor of Grayscale over SEC, opening door for first spot Bitcoin ETF



“The Grayscale team and our legal advisors are actively reviewing the details outlined in the Court’s opinion and will be pursuing next steps with the SEC. We will share more information as soon as practicable,” continued the written statement.



GBTC, which has $16 billion in assets under management as of Tuesday, was the first crypto product investors could trade in their brokerage accounts to get exposure to bitcoin. It was launched in 2013, well before the approval of bitcoin ETFs in Canada or bitcoin futures ETFs in the U.S. Grayscale charges a 2% annual fee to investors, making it a cash cow for parent company Digital Currency Group, led by Barry Silbert.



“It virtually guarantees they will approve BlackRock and Fidelity,” said Dave Weisberger, CEO of CoinRoutes, a platform that provides algorithmic trading and consolidated market data products for digital assets across multiple exchanges and liquidity providers. “Grayscale may need to refile, but they will almost certainly be approved as well.”



Firms have been applying for spot bitcoin ETFs for more than two years, but so far, the SEC has denied more than 30 proposals since 2021 — a 100% rejection rate. But investor sentiment was buoyed in June when BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager with some $9 trillion in assets under management, put in an application. The firm has had all but one of its previous 575 ETF applications accepted.&nbsp;



—&nbsp;CNBC’s Jordan Smith contributed to this report.

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<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="820" height="462" src="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107290995-1692818566260-isro-1694376945340080398-img1-820x462.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-426967" srcset="https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107290995-1692818566260-isro-1694376945340080398-img1-820x462.jpg 820w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107290995-1692818566260-isro-1694376945340080398-img1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107290995-1692818566260-isro-1694376945340080398-img1-160x90.jpg 160w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107290995-1692818566260-isro-1694376945340080398-img1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://cms.cnbcafrica.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/107290995-1692818566260-isro-1694376945340080398-img1.jpg 929w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 820px) 100vw, 820px" /><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The shadow of the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft is seen on the moon’s surface. ISRO</figcaption></figure>



The list is grim reading: Stuck, failed, missed, failed, failed, stuck, failed, crashed, missed, crashed, crashed.



Those were the fate of the Soviet Union’s first 11 attempts before successfully landing a spacecraft on the moon, according to a database compiled by Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who catalogs space missions.



Even in the modern era — with nine lunar landing attempts since 2013 — the track record is still shaky. Before India’s success Wednesday, missions by China, India, Israel, Japan and Russia were three for eight in the past decade.



McDowell’s database showcases the monumental challenge undertaken by the 50 attempts to land on the moon, with a cheeky scoreboard that reads: Earthlings 23, Gravity 27.



India chocked up its first W against Gravity on Wednesday, after the country’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft safely landed on the lunar surface. The feat makes India the fourth country to successfully land on the moon, and the first to touch down near the lunar south pole.



“They should feel very proud of this accomplishment,” Jim Bridenstine, who led NASA as administrator from 2018 to 2021, told CNBC.



Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of India’s moon landing is the shoestring budget — by government standards — with which the country achieved the mission. In 2020, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) estimated the Chandrayaan-3 mission would cost about $75 million. The launch was delayed two years, which likely increased the overall mission’s cost. ISRO has not responded to CNBC’s request for an updated cost figure.



But that rivals the lowest-cost lunar lander missions in development in the U.S. NASA in recent years turned to having companies compete for fixed-price contracts to build moon landers, under a program it calls Commercial Lunar Payload Services. The CLPS program has a maximum budget of $2.6 billion over 10 years, with 14 companies vying for mission contracts typically worth upwards of $70 million each.



Overall, NASA’s annual budget dwarfs that of its Indian counterpart. In 2023, the U.S. agency received $25.4 billion in funding, compared to the ISRO’s budget of about $1.6 billion. Bridenstine stressed that NASA’s much larger budget is a reflection of the “different level of capability” that the U.S. agency offers, with everything from a continuous astronaut presence in orbit to missions targeting planets, asteroids and more.



As a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. spends the most on space — although it still amounts to just 0.28% of GDP.&nbsp; That ranks well ahead of India’s 0.04% of GDP, according to a July report on the global space economy by the Space Foundation.



“India should have in its ambitions the desire to invest more and more and develop the capabilities that are more on par with the United States,” Bridenstine said.



India is increasingly seen as a top player in space geopolitically. While China has succeeded Russia as the most significant rival to U.S. influence and capabilities in space, India may yet take that third spot in the space superpower hierarchy.



“I would hope that they use [Chandrayaan-3] as an opportunity to capitalize on the success,” Bridenstine said. “They’ve got a big economy and they’re going to be able to put money into space exploration.”



“Costs are going to continue to go down, which is a very positive development for everybody who’s interested in space exploration,” he added. “And costs to get to the moon are going to go down, especially as we have more and more companies doing more and more missions.”

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