Index faces rough ride as trend towards new stock offers looks likely to continue until late next week
Leading stocks finished weaker yesterday on higher turnover as the Bank of Communications (Bocom) initial public offering - one of the most popular this year - tempted some investors to sell part of their holdings so they could jump aboard the bandwagon.
The Hang Seng Index fell 0.3 per cent or 47.21 points to 13,904.81 on the second day of Bocom's retail offer. Turnover surged to $14.56 billion from $9.86 billion, the third-lowest of the year so far, on Monday.
The July index futures contract fell below the key 14,000-point level yesterday to 13,971, a drop of 34.
Fredrick Tsang Sui-cheong, a director at China Everbright Research, said he expected the trend of investors switching funds from listed shares to initial public offerings to continue until late next week, when the books close on a string of major fund-raising activities.
'After that, the Hang Seng Index may perform better,' he said.