‘No chances of making money’: Chinese retail investors have lost more than 100,000 yuan each this year
US-China trade war has also contributed to sharp falls in Shanghai Composite Index
So much for mainland Chinese investors’ plans of gaining from the country’s economic growth through its equity market. Millions of individual investors have learned to be patient with stocks, only to bear further losses amid Beijing’s escalating trade war with Washington.
“Playing the stock market is the biggest mistake of my life,” said Chen Yin, 37, a Shanghai-based retail investor. “The market downturn makes me feel hopeless.”
China’s plummeting stocks raise fears that market is early casualty in trade war
Chen invested 300,000 yuan (US$43,410) in the A-share market five years ago, and had lost half of his investment as of Friday. He is among the 100 million mainland investors most of whom have spent years of savings on trading shares.
Individual A-share investors have lost more than 100,000 yuan each so far this year, after US$3 trillion in market capitalisation was wiped out. A traumatic 7.6 per cent fall in the Shanghai Composite Index, China’s benchmark gauge, last week has triggered a new crisis of confidence, with disgruntled investors venting their anger at market regulators as well as listed companies.
The gauge ended at 2,606.9 on Friday, 21.2 per cent shy of its close in 2017. The index slumped by 3.7 per cent last Monday, after the weeklong National Day holiday, as the global equity markets rout spread to the mainland, before tumbling by 5.2 per cent on Thursday.
The sharp falls were also a result of mounting worries about the simmering US-China trade war, and came despite analysts’ warnings that the panic selling had been overdone.
The retail investors disagreed. Last week, the idea that trading stocks was more detrimental than drugs went viral on Chinese social media platforms.