BEIJING: China’s stocks dropped for the fourth time in five days as turnover waned and concern grew that government intervention is driving away investors.
The benchmark Shanghai Composite slid 1.7 percent to close at 3,694.57 after changing direction more than 10 times. Volume was 35 percent below the 30-day average. Technology and phone stocks led declines, with Leshi Internet Information & Technology (Beijing) Co. and ZTE Corp. losing more than 2 percent.
The value of shares traded on the index has fallen 63 percent from this year’s high in June as the government allowed hundreds of companies to halt trading, restricted short sales and suspended initial public offerings. The number of new investors declined last week to the smallest since the government started releasing figures in May, while margin debt in China has dropped about 43 percent from its June high.
“The measures by the government to restrict selling and the deleveraging by margin traders have contributed to decreasing demand for stocks,” said Dai Ming, a fund manager at Hengsheng Asset Management Co. in Shanghai, who’s kept his holdings unchanged. “Confidence will take a while to fully recover.”
The CSI 300 Index lost 2.1 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng China Enterprises Index added 0.5 percent, while the Hang Seng Index gained 0.4 percent.
