Beijing tells some investors not to sell as Chinese stock rout resumes
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Chinese authorities have in recent days told some institutional investors not to sell stocks, as regulators face renewed pressure to stabilise share prices following the steep decline in the first weeks of the new year.
Since October, market regulators have been providing private instructions — known as “window guidance” — to some investors, which prevent them from being net sellers of equities on certain days.
Such restrictions on selling helped to spur a rebound of about 3 per cent for the benchmark CSI 300 stock index in the final week of 2023, traders said. But as the curbs on some smaller mutual funds and on brokers were eased in the new year, the index completely reversed those gains and is down more than 4 per cent this month.
Beijing has now reimposed such restrictions on securities companies — large institutional investors in
Allowing some smaller funds to sell more shares has enabled them to meet demand for redemptions, but fund managers said these exceptions were only granted on a case-by-case basis by officials, who did not provide any rationale for rejecting one request or accepting another.
Xia Chun, chief economist at Forthright Financial Holdings in Hong Kong, said the net sales restrictions were unlikely to lift investor sentiment in China.
“Retail investors won’t welcome such window guidance in any case, because it’s simply not working,” he said.
