In a surprising reaction to the sharp decline in the stock market yesterday, mainland retail investors were neither rowdy nor hostile. Instead, they expected the government to bail out the troubled stock market once again.
'Paper losses are not real losses,' Zhang Wei, a salesman at a forklift company, said.
'I believe the government will take action again because China can't afford financial turmoil similar to Vietnam's.'
Admitting that his portfolio had lost 20 per cent of its value since April 23 when the Ministry of Finance slashed the tax on stock trading transactions, Mr Zhang said he still believed that the 3,000-point level of the Shanghai Composite Index was rock-bottom.
The index yesterday plunged 7.73 per cent to 3,072.33 points.
By announcing the stamp duty cut in April, Beijing sent a clear signal to the market that it was putting a floor under the stock market to prevent the key indicator from crashing below the key 3,000-point level.
When Zhou Zhengrong, a millionaire investor who bet 4 million yuan (HK$4.5 million) in the A-share market last year, tallied his account portfolio yesterday, he found half of its value had been wiped out by this year's 41.6 per cent plunge of the key index.
