Center

Stock index keeps sliding deep in early morning session

By Li Zengxin (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2007-05-31 10:30

Chinese stocks opened lower again today and made a 150-point steep plunge in five minutes within half an hour after the opening.

The Shanghai Composite Index opened from 4,006.28 and rocketed to 4,077.74 within minutes but soon turned around to slide. After hitting the lowest 3,858.04 point around 10 am, it made a U-turn and started climbing. Of the 1,400-odd stocks listed on the two exchanges, only 90 saw their share prices go up by now, while 1,200 were dropping.

It seemed inevitable that the stocks will see yet another day of turbulent fluctuations, after loosing the 4,000 foothold. Yesterday, the market had a 281-point dive, with 860 stocks dropping to the maximum price slipping limit. Both the two benchmark indices, the Shanghai Composite Index and Shenzhen Component Index fell more than 6 percent.

A total of 1,243.2 billion yuan vanished because of a single day's drop yesterday. The total market value of the two stock exchanges was 17,780.3 billion yuan by yesterday's closing, compared with the 19,023.5 billion yuan on Tuesday.

On the other side, the rise in stamp tax to 0.3 percent from 0.1 percent resulted in a big increase in the stamp tax collection yesterday. The 416.68 billion yuan turnover generated 2.44 billion yuan in stamp tax, up 1.63 billion yuan from the previous 810 million yuan in stamp tax to the Ministry of Finance.