A steep rally in Chinese stock markets has cooled in the past three months, as weak economic data and profit-taking bring this year’s steep rally to an end.
The MSCI China index has fallen 7.4 per cent since September, its worst three-month performance in an otherwise strong year for the country’s equities, with gains fuelled by optimism over Chinese technological innovation and government support for markets.
The index is still up 28.7 per cent in the year to date, with several investors and strategists attributing this quarter’s pullback to profit-taking. “Hong Kong and China have been up two years in a row,” said Nicholas Chui, a portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton. “Profit-taking is a very natural reaction.”