SHANGHAI: China stocks edged up on Monday but expands were capped by selling in financials, whereas worries of volatility in Europe affected on stocks in Hong Kong.
The CSI300 index rose 0.6 percent, to 3,591.82 points at the end of the morning session, while the Shanghai Composite Index inched up 0.1 percent, to 3,355.85 points.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index dropped 0.1 percent, to 24,819.61, and the Hong Kong China Enterprises Index lost 0.7 percent, to 12,179.24, falling for the first time in four days as investors booked profits from recent gains.
The sweeping election victory of the anti-austerity Syriza party in Greece put Athens on a collision course with international lenders, dampened investors’ appetite for riskier assets worldwide.
“It has had a slight impact on the Chinese stock market because it puts into question the future of the euro,” said Zhang Yanbin, an analyst at Zheshang Securities.
China brokerage Shenwan Hongyuan leapt 35.6 percent by midday on its debut in Shenzhen but failed to pull up other financial stocks. The CSI300 financial sub-index was down 0.1 percent and the bank sub-index fell 0.9 percent.
ChiNext, Shenzhen’s NASDAQ-like index, jumped 1.3 percent. China’s small and medium cap shares often move in the opposite direction of large cap shares.
China CSI300 stock index futures for February rose 1.1 percent, to 3,616, 24.18 points above the current value of the underlying index.
In Hong Kong, PetroChina supplier Wilson Engineering Services Co Ltd, jumped 10 percent after the Shanghai-based firm said it would post a profit for 2014 versus a year earlier.
The index measuring price differences between dual-listed companies in Shanghai and Hong Kong stood at 128.87.
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.
Total volume of A shares traded in Shanghai was 16.87 billion shares, while Shenzhen volume was 9.89 billion shares.
Total trading volume of companies included in the HSI index was 0.6 billion shares.
