Chinese shares gyrated yesterday, sinking to five-year lows, after stock market regulators sought to reassure jittery investors with a promise to crack down on stock price manipulation and “malicious short selling.”
Shares in Shanghai and the smaller market in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, swung between big losses and small gains throughout the day. The markets have languished on the heavy selling of property shares that have suffered with a slump in the real-estate market.
Market observers said there were signs the authorities had, as is often the case, ordered big institutional investors to step up buying of state-owned banks and other heavyweights.
Photo: AP
However, shares still mostly lost ground on worries about China’s economic outlook, with traders unmoved by authorities’ pledges of support for markets.
Propping up the market with cash cannot be sustained and would not provide a lasting turnaround as long as the property sector remains weak and a weight on consumer and investor confidence, analysts and investors said, adding that the task is also massive: Chinese stocks are worth about US$9 trillion.
The main index in the smaller market in Shenzhen sank 4.4 percent, but then rapidly recovered, bouncing between losses and gains and closing 1.1 percent lower. The Shanghai Composite Index slipped 3.5 percent at one point and closed 1 percent lower, at 2,702.19 points.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index slipped 0.15 percent, or 23.55 points, to 15,510.01 points.
Wilder swings were also seen on the CSI 1000 which fell as much as 8.7 percent yesterday before regaining some of the losses to close down 6.1 percent. The CSI 1000 is often used to track so-called “snowball derivatives,” which offer big gains, but also could result in exaggerated losses.
Chinese companies have lost billions of US dollars of market value as investors shifted away from the markets in Hong Kong and China in search of better returns.
The China Securities Regulatory Commission on Sunday said it would redouble enforcement of measures against crimes such as market manipulation and malicious short selling, while guiding more medium and long-term funds into the market.
That move followed other support measures such as restrictions on short-selling or reductions in trading duties in the past few days that appear to have done little to reassure investors who have been pulling money out of the markets for months.
Comments by former US president Donald Trump that he might impose a tariff of more than 60 percent on imports of Chinese goods if he is re-elected also hurt market sentiment.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
‘DRAMATIC AND POSITIVE’: AI growth would be better than it previously forecast and would stay robust even if the Chinese market became inaccessible for customers, it said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday raised its full-year revenue growth outlook after posting record profit for last quarter, despite growing market concern about an artificial intelligence (AI) bubble. The company said it expects revenue to expand about 35 percent year-on-year, driven mainly by faster-than-expected demand for leading-edge chips for AI applications. The world’s biggest contract chipmaker in July projected that revenue this year would expand about 30 percent in US dollar terms. The company also slightly hiked its capital expenditure for this year to US$40 billion to US$42 billion, compared with US$38 billion to US$42 billion it set previously. “AI demand actually
RSS