Investors keep a close eye on the stock board in a stock office in Fuyang, Anhui Province yesterday, the first trading day in August. Photo: CFP
By Wang Xinyuan
The solid growth in the A-share market in the past seven straight months is expected to continue but a market analyst said yesterday that economic recovery isn’t yet certain.
Between December 31, 2008 and July 31, the A-share market has grown 87 percent on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) and 110 percent on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.
The Shanghai composite index and Shenzhen component index closed at 3,412.06 and 13,670.72 on July 31, up 15.3 percent and 16.18 percent than June 30 respectively.
The number of A-shares traded in July reached 617.9 billion shares, China Business News said yesterday, which is the highest record in a single month.
The July trading volume in Shanghai hit 4.73 trillion yuan ($692.53 billion). On July 29, when the Shanghai stock market fell more than 170 points, the trading volume reached 296.9 billion yuan ($43.47 billion), the highest in a single day.
Despite the high level, the market is likely to keep growing in coming months given abundant liquidity and the fact that government will not tighten the monetary policy in the short term, Huang Xuejun, an analyst at Everbright Securities, told the Global Times.
Apart from investors’ confidence and optimistic expectations on China’s economy, large institutional investors such as Central Huijin Investment Co and mutual funds also increased their net long positions on the stock market, said Huang.
Market enthusiasm among individual investors is also on the rise.
A total of 24.15 million individual investors traded last week, the highest since China Securities Depository and Clearing published the number in January 2008.
“Whether the stock market will continue to rise depends on whether the economic recovery is sustainable,” said Lu Zhengwei, a senior economist at Industrial Bank.
Lu noted that the rebounding economy is currently fragile and imbalanced.
“The economy is mainly boosted by government investment while the other two important factors of the economy – consumption and export – are rather weak,” Lu explained.
The Shanghai composite index and Shenzhen component index closed at 3,462.59 and 13,856.99 yesterday, up 1.48 percent and 1.36 percent from July 31 respectively.