Since it was set up in November 1969, the Hang Seng Index (HSI) has been the Hong Kong stock market's most widely quoted index, both locally and internationally.
The HSI comprises 33 stocks which are representative of the market. The aggregate market value of these stocks accounts for about 70 per cent of the total market capitalisation.
The stock market has been through some tough times in the last decade. There was the big crash of October 1987, when the HSI fell 421 points in a single day in response to Wall Street's Black Monday. The market was closed for four trading days.
When it re-opened, the index dropped a further 1,121 points, wiping out more than one-third of the total market value of local stocks. But it was not long before the market recovered. The HSI hit a record intraday high of 16,673 on August 7, 1997 before it was hit hard by the Asian currency turmoil in the second half of 1997. The HSI plunged to 10,723 at the end of 1997 as a result of deterioration of the regional economies and a series of speculative attacks on the Hong Kong-US dollar peg.
As a result of the Asian financial crisis, the HSI slid further in the first eight months in 1998. It gradually picked up and recovered to over 17,400 at the end of March this year.
The Hong Kong stock market recently faced another plunge. Dragged by the steep slide of the US stock market, the HSI dropped by seven per cent to 14,763 on April 17, with technology-related stocks taking the hardest knocks.