China Capital Markets Research
For the past few weeks, most of the major news in China has centred on the Communist Party Congress. This is an pretty important event in China that happens once every 5 years and usually results in a number of far-reaching policy and people changes throughout the country and government.
Lead Toys
With recall troubles dating back to 2005 when a toddler in the US ate a loose magnet and later died, the toy manufacture Mattel has been in the centre of a toy recall that has thousands of class-action lawyers around the world drooling. The company has gone through numerous recalls in the past few months, the largest being for 18 million playsets plagued by another loose magnet.
China, well known for its capital controls made some steps towards loosening those controls for individual investors last month with the announcement that individual mainland Chinese investors would be able to invest in the HK stock market. However, now it appears the implementation will be another few days or weeks off according to an announcement by the Bank of China (BOC).
Reading Bank of China’s ticker last week was a crash course in China’s stock markets. Towards the end of last week, the bank reported on its sub-prime exposure. On the next trading day, if you were given the two ticker symbols for Bank of China (BOC) and their positions, you’d be hard pressed to guess what BOC’s actual position was. In HK, BOC fell by as much as 5.4% over the course of the trading day*, while in Shanghai, the stock actually rose 1% on a day when the entire market rose 5% overall. What happened?
Chinese Banks & the sub-prime market - part 2/2 - Individual Banks
Written by KapronasiaEarlier this week we looked at how the Shanghai market has remained relatively unscathed by the sub-prime meltdown, but what about individual banks' exposure?
Chinese Banks & the sub-prime market - part 1/2 - Avoiding the crunch
Written by KapronasiaLosses through the week in major indices around the world and indeed in emerging market countries in Asia, have chipped away yearly gains that most indices have chalked up this year. China's Shanghai index however is up nearly 78% on the year. How is it possible?
With both the Olympics and Para-Olympics now over and the vestiges of Olympic advertising slowly being removed from billboards around China, it is getting back to business as usual in China, or as usual as it could be. For awhile, the feeling was that the Chinese economy would come out of the Olympics, weather the credit crunch and continue on the path of the fantastic growth that China has experienced over the past 10 years. As the situation in the United States worsens, both as a result of the credit crisis and the worsening economic situation, that feeling is changing.
The Chinese October holiday is just wrapping up here in China with millions of people returning from their home towns to major cities and getting back into work. The world markets haven’t been on holiday though and the teetering economic situation in Europe seem to be reaching a head.