Chinese stocks were mixed on Tuesday but the main index was knocked down by slides in banking shares and heavyweight PetroChina, which tumbled as shares from its IPO last year came on the market. Metal-related shares continued to rise, as investors bet steel and aluminium makers would benefit from Aluminium Corp of China's investment in miner Rio Tinto.
The Shanghai Composite Index, which had jumped 8.13 percent on Monday in its biggest daily rise since June 2005, ended Tuesday down 1.55 percent at 4,599.696 points. It hit an intra-day low of 4,550.429.
"Yesterday's rebound may be just a blip," said Kong Linghua, strategist at TX Investment Consulting. "There are plenty of things ahead to worry about: economic uncertainty, slowing corporate profit growth and a massive supply of equity, among others." Losers in Shanghai slightly outnumbered gainers by 461 to 438, while turnover in Shanghai A shares shrank to a modest 93.0 billion yuan ($13.0 billion) from Monday's 108.6 billion yuan.
Traders say some investors took profits on Tuesday to reduce risk during week-long Lunar New Year holidays that will start on Wednesday, while many fund managers were already off on holiday.
PetroChina, the biggest index component, slumped 6.37 percent to 24.71 yuan after jumping 8.07 percent on Monday. One billion PetroChina shares from its Shanghai IPO became freely tradable on Tuesday as a lock-up period expired.
Another stock with an expiring lock-up period, Industrial Bank, surged 3.54 percent to 46.46 yuan after leaping 9.60 percent on Monday. The bank had 3.28 billion shares becoming freely tradable on Tuesday. Other banks were weak, however. Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, the biggest bank, fell 1.94 percent to 7.09 yuan.
Comments
Comments are closed.