BEIJING: China stocks fell on Friday as investors grew cautious after four straight days of gains, and Hong Kong shares followed in a broad-based morning sell-off.
That still leaves markets up for the week so far but still short of recovering from a sharp crash last Friday which left benchmark indexes down around 5 percent for the week.
The CSI300 index fell 1.4 percent, to 3,696.80 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 1.2 percent, to 3,542.13 points.
China CSI300 stock index futures for December fell 1.7 percent, to 3,627.2, 69.60 points below the current value of the underlying index.
The sell-off was led by index heavyweights in finance and property sectors, but some small caps rallied as investors shifted out of blue chips into the ChiNext growth board index .
China will officially launch a “circuit-breaker” mechanism for the country’s benchmark stock indexes after the New Year holiday in January, respected financial magazine Caixin reported on its website, citing regulatory sources.
