BEIJING: China’s main indexes rose on Monday in the first trading after a two-day holiday during which further restrictions on futures trading were announced.
The CSI300 index rose 0.3 percent, to 3,376.15 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.9 percent, to 3,187.82 points.
Financials were broadly down, likely reflecting the move to raise the cost of futures purchases, but most other sectors were up at midday.
The policy move on Wednesday evening – raising margin requirements for non-hedging futures contracts to 40 percent of contract values from 30 percent – is another blow to the nascent futures exchange, which regulators partly blamed for China’s recent equities volatility.
“Today China’s futures index died,” Yang Tao, an influential investment commentator, wrote on Weibo, China’s popular microblogging service.
Futures trading volume “has receded dramatically. After today, stock market movements will no longer have any meaningful relation with the futures indices,” he said.
Nonetheless, futures themselves were up sharply. China CSI300 stock index futures for September rose 6.4 percent, to 3,222, or 154.15 points below the midday value of the underlying index.
The Hang Seng index edged up 0.2 percent, to 20,885.74 points.
The Hong Kong China Enterprises Index gained 1.9 percent, to 9,344.02.
The index measuring price differences between dual-listed companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong stood at 142.89, compared with 146.52 at the end of trading on Sept. 2, after which China markets were closed for two days.
A value above 100 indicates Shanghai shares are pricing at a premium to shares in the same company trading in Hong Kong, and vice versa.
The northbound quota for the Hong Kong-Shanghai Stock Connect, currently set at 13 billion yuan, saw net outflows of 0.91 billion yuan.
