Across The Border | Small investors’ losses continue to pile up as stock recovery hopes fall flat
Despite lengthy experience many retail players had hoped prices would surge this year after the disastrous blow-out which began in the middle of last year
The stock market has given mainland individual equity investors another cold shoulder, despite their pinning high hopes on a strong rebound to recover part of the losses they suffered at the beginning of the year.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite Index has shed about 12 per cent so far this year, and it is still 40 per cent off the close reached on June 12 last year, after which a stock market rout started.
“It is another disappointing year,” Shanghai Shiva Investment hedge-fund manager Zhou Ling said. “The regulator’s efforts to bolster investor confidence didn’t work.”
A survey by Hitlink Royalflush Information Network, a financial information provider, showed the A-share market had more than 100 million retail investors and most of them were seasoned investors with equity trading experience of more than five years.
The small investors would use years’ worth of savings to play stocks amid a belief they could take advantage of price swings to make profits.
